Don't agree, in the past metabase was good, now it's just getting worse.
I was a big fan of metabase (to the point I deployed it in 4 companies and rolled it out for many people to use in their daily workflow). All was nice.
Somewhere around 0.31 something changed in the internal dev/release flow. I get the feeling they have some kind of internal push to add unnecessary untested features which all look nice on paper, and work on a 5-row 5-column user tables. Until you actually use those features and all functionality fails miserably..
Had weird issues with it, which usually occurred after upgrades, on both small and bigger decently indexed DB's (pg and mysql), things like:
- had sets of reports which all worked fine until they hit a 1001 rows.. and suddenly the UI had a react race condition.
- X-Rays which silently fail and break the UI, while on the DB server you see the queries complete.
- Deployed new versions which would hammer databases by distincting every column individually every hour, instead of handling statistics a bit more intelligently. Disabled that ofcourse.
- Deployed versions in other countries, where the UI client-server latency caused the whole UI to break (probably the limits of setTimeout reached? :-)).
If you check the github issues, it's just ignored problems and they are focus on releasing new functionality instead of fixing the issues. Doesn't really motivate to report anymore problems.
They had one good thing: they would allow you to work in sql and write efficient queries, but clearly they decided it's time to remove the last good feature and now only want graphical query builders.
If you use metabase: deploy it on a replica such it doesn't whack your prod DB. And take backups before upgrading, because there is no revert.
I've spent enough time on Metabase problems, won't touch it anymore.
We've walked a fine line between fixing bugs, adding the features that our users have asked for and building out the BI interface we think the world should be using in 5 years.
We don't always get it right, and I'm sorry if we broke things for you on the performance side.
We will be spending a few of our development cycles after 0.33 to try to clear out our bug queue.
One specific factual point I'd like to reply to however -
SQL isn't going anywhere. If anything we're making it easier to both write plain SQL, use SQL templates or use our graphical interface on top of SQL query results in our next release (preview at https://github.com/metabase/metabase/releases/tag/v0.33.0-pr...)
I’ve been using Metabase off and on in prod since 2016. I think you guys are really onto something and I love seeing Clojure in a popular OSS project. I know you guys just got some money; here’s my pitch to make it count: Metabase would be a lot more sticky if you provided a robust home for annotation and discussion. You’re better than most at letting admins describe data, but often users want to talk about the data they are discovering. Doing so in the context of the data is so much more effective than talking about it in generalities in Slack. I think Yellowfin has some features around discussion but there is always room for improvement. Maybe one could: Comment on a data point, write an explanation for why a date range has weird data, or tag a colleague to ask about an outlier in their dept. Celebrate wins with emojis? All I know is that there is nothing stickier or more engaging than discussion history. Keep up the good fight!
While I have you here...
<nag>
bump for the Athena driver. Also I can’t use Metabot without some privacy settings. Can’t anything be done? </nag>
I was a big fan of metabase (to the point I deployed it in 4 companies and rolled it out for many people to use in their daily workflow). All was nice.
Somewhere around 0.31 something changed in the internal dev/release flow. I get the feeling they have some kind of internal push to add unnecessary untested features which all look nice on paper, and work on a 5-row 5-column user tables. Until you actually use those features and all functionality fails miserably..
Had weird issues with it, which usually occurred after upgrades, on both small and bigger decently indexed DB's (pg and mysql), things like:
- had sets of reports which all worked fine until they hit a 1001 rows.. and suddenly the UI had a react race condition.
- X-Rays which silently fail and break the UI, while on the DB server you see the queries complete.
- Deployed new versions which would hammer databases by distincting every column individually every hour, instead of handling statistics a bit more intelligently. Disabled that ofcourse.
- Deployed versions in other countries, where the UI client-server latency caused the whole UI to break (probably the limits of setTimeout reached? :-)).
If you check the github issues, it's just ignored problems and they are focus on releasing new functionality instead of fixing the issues. Doesn't really motivate to report anymore problems.
They had one good thing: they would allow you to work in sql and write efficient queries, but clearly they decided it's time to remove the last good feature and now only want graphical query builders.
If you use metabase: deploy it on a replica such it doesn't whack your prod DB. And take backups before upgrading, because there is no revert.
I've spent enough time on Metabase problems, won't touch it anymore.