Blogs
Insights & Updates
Explore our latest articles, industry insights, and expert perspectives on data analytics and digital transformation, featuring inside stories from the Understanding Data team.
How a Breakfast Session Turned into a Perfect Lesson in Orchestration
Last week, we organized another breakfast session at Understanding Data themed “From Business Question to Solution.” It’s now a regular event every last Thursday of the month. But behind the scenes, there’s a lot of work that goes into it. First, we stopped by the bakery to pick up some pastries. Then we set the table. Next, the first participants arrived, and the session could begin. The heat wave calls for some extra refreshment. Trigger warning: We noticed that the water pitcher was almost empty and needed to be refilled.
Smart Local Governance: From business question to insight
How do you turn existing data into concrete actions that make a city cleaner and more pleasant? We took on that challenge together with the City of Turnhout. What began as an analysis of reports regarding litter and illegal dumping evolved into a complete end-to-end data project: from business requirements and data integration to data modeling, dashboards, and automated notifications.
Data Warehouse vs Data Lake
“We just finished building a data warehouse… and now we’re starting a data lake.” But why? A data warehouse and a data lake serve similar goals, yet they solve them in very different ways. In this article, we’ll explore the differences between the two and the technology behind each approach.
How a Breakfast Session Became the Perfect Lesson in Snapshots
Last week, we hosted a breakfast session at Understanding Data. And as you would expect, there were pastries on the table. Lots of pastries. During the session, we took a few pictures of the table. At first glance, they are just nice atmosphere shots. But in reality, those photos perfectly illustrate what a snapshot is in the world of data.
DRY data documentation by using dbt Doc Blocks
Using dbt doc blocks enables DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) documentation by defining field descriptions in central Markdown files, improving consistency and maintainability as projects scale. This approach prevents the need to redefine fields in multiple YAML files, allowing updates to be reflected instantly across all downstream models.
Secrets
What is a secret? Some things you want to tell everyone, such as: We are the partner for data-driven work. Other things you prefer not to tell everyone, such as the PIN code of your bank card.
Behind the scenes
At Understanding Data, our days usually revolve around numbers, insights and dashboards. This time, however, something different was on the agenda: a professional photoshoot.
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