00:00:00You already know SQL, so dashboards should be easy, right?
00:00:03But every time we're back doing the same thing.
00:00:05We're exporting CSBs, writing a quick script that we didn't actually plan to write.
00:00:10And those BI tickets? They're still sitting there.
00:00:13Which is weird, cause nowadays this problem should be solved.
00:00:16And for a lot of people, it is.
00:00:18A lot of devs are now using Redash to ship internal analytics in just minutes.
00:00:23It's open source, over 28,000 stars on GitHub, and the latest version just dropped.
00:00:27And honestly, it might finally kill our endless spreadsheet workflow.
00:00:30I'll show you how to set all this up, in just a few minutes.
00:00:33Now, Redash is pretty simple.
00:00:40It's a SQL client and a dashboard builder in one tool.
00:00:43You connect your data, so Postgres, MySQL, BigQuery, Snowflake, Mongo, you name it.
00:00:48You connect what you need.
00:00:50And then you just write SQL.
00:00:52You now get things like autocomplete, a Schema browser, turn results into charts.
00:00:57And you can drop all this into your dashboards.
00:00:59All done.
00:01:00And that's exactly why devs like it.
00:01:02Because it replaces a bunch of annoying little tasks with one clean workflow.
00:01:07Instead of exporting to Excel or watching reports,
00:01:10we just do it once in one interface, across all of our different databases.
00:01:16There's no lock-ins.
00:01:17It's fully self-hosted, which makes it free.
00:01:19So it's not just dashboards, it's less redundancy.
00:01:24Let me show you.
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00:01:31All right.
00:01:31I got a fresh Redash instance running locally.
00:01:35First, I can add a data source.
00:01:37And right here, it's done.
00:01:38Now I can write a query.
00:01:41And notice this.
00:01:42Autocomplete, Schema browser here.
00:01:45I can click tables instead of guessing names.
00:01:48Let's grab some events data, group by day, for example, and run it.
00:01:54Done.
00:01:54Now one click, I can visualize.
00:01:57I can switch to a line chart or another chart, add a parameter so we can filter by a date range.
00:02:03And see, it's already progressing kind of fast here.
00:02:07Now if I drop it into a dashboard, I can now even schedule it to refresh every hour.
00:02:13And that's pretty much it.
00:02:14Query, chart, dashboard, shareable link with no spreadsheets.
00:02:19It looks simple.
00:02:20That's the point.
00:02:22On paper, Redash looks like every other BI tool, but it doesn't feel like one.
00:02:26Redash is built for people who want to write SQL, not skip out on it.
00:02:30That's the major difference here between others.
00:02:32Metabase is good for no code teams, but once queries get complex, it's going to slow down.
00:02:38Super set gives you more visual power and scale,
00:02:41but it's heavier and not as fast for just writing queries.
00:02:45Then of course, there's Tableau and Power BI.
00:02:47These are very polished and honestly the baseline for getting into analytics for a long time.
00:02:52But these two tools are expensive and often overkill for what small tools do and what we actually need.
00:03:00Redash sits in a different spot.
00:03:01It feels like your SQL editor grew just enough to be useful to the rest of your team.
00:03:05You still get things like queries across multiple databases.
00:03:09Great.
00:03:10Reusable snippets, resolved caching, API access and the ability to remix someone else's queries instantly.
00:03:17That's why most dev teams are starting to pick up on this a lot quicker than these other blown out expensive tools.
00:03:23So what do people actually like?
00:03:25Well, first the SQL workflow is fast.
00:03:28You're not fighting the tool, hence the point why SQL is built in.
00:03:32You write the query and you move on.
00:03:34Then self-hosting is simple.
00:03:36This is an open source tool, which means I can self-host it and I'm just going to use Docker.
00:03:40So we know Docker.
00:03:41It's one command.
00:03:42We're done.
00:03:43It's going.
00:03:44Then there's tons of data sources plus scheduling and alerts.
00:03:48And the API and embedding, they're great if you're building internal tools.
00:03:52For a lot of teams, this becomes something they use every day.
00:03:55But again, open source tools.
00:03:57This is not that polished, so there's going to be trade-offs.
00:04:00The visualizations are good, but they're not amazing.
00:04:04If you need highly custom dashboards, then other alternatives are going to be better.
00:04:08Self-hosting also means you own the ops, updates, scaling, maintenance.
00:04:13That's on you, obviously, right?
00:04:15So you have to be aware of that.
00:04:16And if your team doesn't like SQL, this is not going to feel great.
00:04:19Search could be better and mobile isn't good.
00:04:22So it's not perfect, but it does one job really well.
00:04:26And that's kind of the point.
00:04:27So should you use it?
00:04:28Well, if your team already works in SQL, probably, yeah.
00:04:32Especially if you have multiple databases,
00:04:34you want internal dashboards without paying a lot,
00:04:37or you're building dev-facing analytics.
00:04:39This is a cool, open source free tool.
00:04:42The use cases are practical, right?
00:04:44Pipeline monitoring, tracking, metrics, updates,
00:04:48even joining API data with database queries.
00:04:51That's where it does really well.
00:04:53Not because it's fancy, no,
00:04:55but because it removes pain from work that we're already doing every day.
00:04:59But honestly, this is cool, but just skip over this.
00:05:03If your team wants no code, just go to Metabase, right?
00:05:06If you need more massive dashboards, go to Tableau or Power BI.
00:05:10But for a lot of us, Redash still makes sense.
00:05:13It's actively maintained.
00:05:14It fits our stack well.
00:05:16The setup is fast.
00:05:17And that's the pretty good trait.
00:05:19It makes it simple to get started.
00:05:21And that's what a lot of us love.
00:05:22So to get started, just clone the repo, run your Docker Compose.
00:05:27That's it.
00:05:28Just install it and see if it works for you.
00:05:30So yeah, that's Redash.
00:05:31SQL, easy dashboard sharing, and way less nonsense.
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00:05:39We'll see you in another video.