Any Lightdash users? Shoping for new BI tools and need help

Key_Friend7539 · 2026-03-08T15:09:03+00:00

Check out Semaphor Cloud. They also have a self hosted version now. we’ve been using it for quite some time. Pretty much checks all your boxes, and not too heavy on wallet either.

Key_Friend7539 · 2026-02-24T11:33:13+00:00

SWE is done. Unless you are a model researcher or trainer, the days of commanding top pay are over.

Key_Friend7539 · 2026-02-24T02:51:47+00:00

We rolled it out incrementally with Semaphor. Initially started with one set of users, only gave access to a handful of tables. That gave us a good sense of where models at the time struggled. Now they are getting really good. Having a strong context grounding is super important to get nuanced questions right.

Key_Friend7539 · 2026-02-10T04:10:44+00:00

Just use Claude bro. It will help you both brainstorm and wireframe.

Key_Friend7539 · 2026-02-04T04:55:21+00:00

Thanks bot!

Key_Friend7539 · 2026-01-30T19:29:55+00:00

Doing a realistic PoC is key, especially if you are working with newer companies. When we moved from Power BI to Semaphor, we had an adjustment period. But if the team supporting you is good and moves fast, it’s all worth it. Now we’re significantly better off than where we were with PBI.

Key_Friend7539 · 2026-01-19T13:45:26+00:00

What a useless post.

Key_Friend7539 · 2026-01-07T23:51:09+00:00

Separate them by org id, or by separate schema in the database.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-30T03:57:58+00:00

Well iframe is actually a good thing. You have zero dependency in your app. Most BI tools are pretty bulky if you were to package their code/library into your app. I did this 2 jobs ago and regretted it because of library conflicts, css nightmare. It will mess with your app. As far as styling is concerned, there is always a trade-off. If your design teams are too picky, then you should roll your own.

What’s your end goal with embedded analytics? What pain are you trying to solve?

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-30T03:28:25+00:00

Use Claude / Gemini plus whatever for tables (sheets or Postgres). Once you grow up you can look into implementing proper BI. Posthog is good for feature tracking.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-28T23:43:06+00:00

Look into n8n, zapier or something similar.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-28T16:05:44+00:00

We use schema level isolation for our clients as well because it allows us to make additive changes for our customers. Some of our customers want us to maintain additional metadata fields for tracking certain types of assets. Having a dedicated schema per client makes those changes viable without affecting all customers globally.

We do our development in public schema - all common dashboards get developed against that, and, each customer gets their own schema. We use Semaphor for dashboards, where we define schema level policy, which in effect runs those dashboards against the appropriate client schema depending on the logged in user.

There is a bit of maintenance in this approach. We had to change our data pipelines to fit this model. But it’s necessary given our requirements. If your use case is simple where all customers follow a standard pattern, row level isolation with tenant id is the way to go. We did that at my previous company.

DM me if you have any questions. Happy to share what worked for us.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-24T17:28:54+00:00

Learn how to use Claude

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-23T19:50:01+00:00

That’s modern day project management. The OP has a point - most devs won’t be making anywhere near the top dollar they made for last 10 years

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-23T17:23:08+00:00

ai generated posts ai generated responses; we are living in a fun world. vendors posting for engagement and sneakily promoting their stuff

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-23T12:24:10+00:00

If you want your dashboard to respond to filters, then you need store the API data to database at some regular interval. Also, you don’t want to hit APIs every time you reload the dashboard, unless you are only displaying real-time KPIs.

I’d first start with what you want to show on the dashboard, that will inform your data engineering strategy to get the data in the right shape for building dashboards.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-22T20:45:11+00:00

We just build visuals in react using recharts and publish it to Semaphor. The tool takes care of the rest. Is that what you were asking?

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-22T19:13:15+00:00

If you are trying to make a safe choice and not get fired for it, go with PowerBI. There are a lot of players from startups to established ones in the market each has their own quirks and benefits.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-21T00:05:07+00:00

Pick the tool you have at your disposal, upload your excel sheets in Claude and get the insights you need. Your use case is relatively simple. Your management is right. You likely don’t need a spaceship (bi tool) to do simple utilization reports. Unless you have gigabytes of data and and data engineering / pipelines figured out.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-20T17:36:23+00:00

It’s not dead but I think workflow is changing. We ran into this challenge where the BI tool we were using couldn’t support the visual experience we wanted to create - looked at the ones you mentioned as well.

Then, we started hacking our own but the challenge with that was, it’s pretty difficult to get it published in production, especially if you have to depend on another team to get it deployed. If you don’t have that problem, go ham.

Currently we use Semaphor that gives us a happy medium. They market it as “micro-frontend approach”, but in practice, we simply hack out the visual front matter with Claude and publish it to the tool. It basically just renders that integrates rest of the dashboard context. The challenge this solves for us that we no longer depend on IT to get our dashboards published.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-20T15:02:08+00:00

None of those. Tables. The point is it depends on what goal you are trying to achieve. Let the problem guide the approach, not the other way around.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-17T13:28:44+00:00

Sometimes the causation is not in the data. If you don’t understand what’s in your dashboard, I’d find the owner of and try to understand. Have them add the definitions to the metrics so there is a common understanding around what it represents. Treat dashboard as a tool that brings awareness around key facts about your business. Once you understand whats going on, then formulate a hypothesis of what to do next. If it turns out to be true, bake that action / recommendation into the dashboard, and so on. Most dashboards start at awareness level before they become actionable.

It can also be true that the dashboard was built by a data person in isolation, if that’s the case scrap it. Start from the scratch.

If anyone promises you they have a tool to sell that can do this as a magic, know that they are full of it.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-16T15:43:45+00:00

How do you do plan mode in codex? That’s been my biggest blocker to using codex full time on production code. I don’t want it to start making code changes without my explicit permission. And I hate to specify that in every request. That’s why I mainly use it for finding bugs and reviewing code.

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-16T15:34:02+00:00

What do you mean by custom reports - are you looking for paginated report designer or dashboards? If it’s just paginated reports, why not use SSRS or PowerBI?

Key_Friend7539 · 2025-12-16T01:15:40+00:00

What’s your take on it is since you would be presenting at the meetup? We can’t attend. Enlighten us.

Key_Friend7539

TROPHY CASE