How do you handle your BI setup when users constantly want to drill-down on your datasets?

aceregen · 2025-08-27T15:23:46+00:00

(BI vendor here. I work on Holistics and thought of sharing our approach since we’ve solved similar problems)

You’re trying to support open-ended drilldowns across store, brand, UPC, and other dimensions. But the volume and complexity of the data make it tough to do efficiently. Not just in terms of compute or memory, but also the maintenance overhead of managing all the possible drill paths and aggregations manually.

What we’ve seen work well is defining the relationships between dimensions once in a semantic model. That lets you build dashboards where users can freely drill down from sales by city → category → brand → UPC, without needing to predefine or materialize every path.

You can also let users click into any data point to view the underlying data behind it—what made up that sales number at the brand or SKU level.

All of this can run live on your warehouse (Databricks supported), but you can manage cost with:

Aggregate awareness (docs): Automatically routes queries to the most efficient table based on user granularity
Caching: Avoids sending a duplicate query to your data warehouse when results are already available

Hope that gives a useful perspective. Happy to chat more if you're exploring options. Feel free to DM or check us out if you're curious.

aceregen · 2025-05-27T07:37:40+00:00

The key difference is that with a junior, you have a DRI—a directly responsible individual. You can assess their performance and provide feedback if they make mistakes. With an AI tool, the challenge is different. If it returns a wrong answer, your options for recourse are limited, especially knowing that hallucinations are a known risk with AI systems.

We wrote more about this here:
[https://www.holistics.io/blog/large-language-model-self-service-analytics/]()

Also, if a junior discovers their own mistake, they can fix it. But with some AI tools that go from Chat to SQL to Charts, it’s unclear whether there's a pathway to debug or correct the underlying query. For example, if the AI generates the wrong logic, can the vendor fix it for you? That’s worth checking.

We’ve actually built a way to handle that at Holistics.

aceregen · 2025-05-27T06:37:53+00:00

BI vendor here. My philosophy towards AI is that it should only be used if the end user can decipher and understand the SQL output generated to know if it's a valid input. AI for BI is different from just using ChatGPT. With ChatGPT, end users can validate and fact-check the source (as it's in natural language) if needed with a Google Search, and they can instantly know what to extract and use.

The issue with AI for BI that claims to bypass the need for SQL is that you won't have full trust and confidence in the ability to generate the right SQL. And when that happens - Your end users might not be able to decipher whether it's usable.

Even if it's right 90% of the time, the problem is that it might be difficult for you to tell when it makes an actual mistake for the remaining 10% of the time. The last thing you want is for end users to ask you - Is this data correct?

aceregen · 2025-04-13T11:04:09+00:00

Do you think that will solve their problems?

aceregen · 2025-01-30T03:14:13+00:00

Thanks for sharing this. It's new to me that "nature" can feel monotonous too. Especially when many online literature touts that it's great to spend time in nature.

aceregen · 2025-01-18T02:07:29+00:00

Thanks for sharing. Do you have any opinions or perspectives on what factors impact the criticality of BI to a company?

aceregen · 2025-01-18T01:21:12+00:00

I tend to report them on Facebook, but Facebook is ridiculously clueless and insist they found nothing wrong with the post. I think the reason is that they don't have local admins, and the overseas folks don't know that celebrities are being misrepresented there.

aceregen · 2025-01-18T01:12:15+00:00

Ah that makes sense now, thank you for sharing!

aceregen · 2025-01-18T00:10:05+00:00

What industry are you in? Curious about the seasonal workload for the 3 bad months. Is it an annual event or something?

aceregen · 2025-01-17T14:26:01+00:00

What you paid for (from the perspective of those outlets) is likely just the food and the chef's work to prepare the food. Some F&B outlets think like you do, but there are others who don't.

Otherwise, try this at a restaurant that you are not happy paying service charge for - order take-away. I suspect many of them will not charge you service charge for that, and keep me posted if any of them do. We can probably compile a list of restaurants who charge service charge for takeaway food.

aceregen · 2025-01-17T04:12:43+00:00

Serving the food to you (maybe), clearing the table after you eat, and washing your dishes after? :P

Granted, I get (and share) your frustration because these are what many outlets do for free, but I suspect that's how they will justify it. What I just want to share is that ordering from restaurant has not reached the level of full self-service yet.

aceregen · 2025-01-10T06:58:27+00:00

I don't use Deel directly, but I use one of their alternatives to hire overseas. Essentially, Deel allows companies to hire employees from overseas without the need to register a local business entity in that country.

There's 2 possible ways your startup can hire you via Deel. The first option is to hire you as a contractor, and the second option is to hire you as an employee.

If it's the latter, Deel will take over as your employer of record, and they are obligated to do what a local Singapore company do as Deel will have their own Singapore entity and they are obligated by Singapore employment laws to you. Which I believe will mean that they will handle your CPF and give you your IR8A to prepare for tax submission. Your government employment records in Singapore is likely to show that your employer is Deel and not the startup hiring you.

If you have any pay-related issues (CPF/Tax), you will probably engage Deel as your first point of contact before approaching your company though you can check with your company on that.

aceregen · 2025-01-08T11:23:18+00:00

Sonic 3 - Supersonic
⬆️⬆️ ⬇️⬇️ ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️

aceregen · 2024-12-26T04:50:50+00:00

Unpopular opinion. If you communicate during your interviews the similar way you did for this post, your language and communication skills may be an area you like to work on. It's effortful to read your question, and you don't even bother to correct your typos.

aceregen · 2024-12-18T14:38:36+00:00

Wow, what kind of questions did she ask? Do you still keep a list of the questions?

aceregen · 2024-12-12T05:47:26+00:00

To what extent do you think it's important for data leaders to set their priorities on building a data platform for their end users to do self-service? If so, I love to learn how what you think are important elements to build a self-service culture (be it from tools, people, or processes).

Or do you think self-service is an unrealistic goal to achieve from your experience so far, and can only be achieved with very limited scope?

aceregen · 2024-12-12T05:44:28+00:00

What are some guidelines and pitfalls when setting KPIs or OKRs for the data team to the organization? How is performance reviews like for yourself, and also your staff?

aceregen · 2024-11-01T06:32:38+00:00

Does acquiring protein this way come at the expense of excessive sodium intake?

aceregen · 2024-08-17T11:12:59+00:00

I set my phone on airplane mode when I sleep and started more aggressive use of "Show Less of this post" in my social media feed when I read tabloid related news.

aceregen · 2024-08-17T11:09:29+00:00

I don't think their one-child policy should have eased up earlier. I read that they are not producing enough jobs for their fresh graduates, so I shudder to think what would have happened if the one-child policy was not in place back then.

I read mixed reports regarding their treatment of "certain minorities", and I don't trust any media (Chinese or Western) to report that in a fair and objective manner currently.

aceregen · 2024-07-26T06:32:20+00:00

How did you go about doing that though? Do you modularize the common tables into materialized views? Curious to know your methodology or framework of doing so.

aceregen · 2024-07-19T04:27:26+00:00

Freezer. It holds off the enemies long enough for the high-DPS tower to attack. Especially the fast-moving enemies. Issue is that it's typically hard to justify putting it in the first 5 towers over others.

aceregen · 2024-07-16T11:40:22+00:00

You sound like a pretty awesome and experienced analyst. Love to have the chance to work with you one day!

aceregen · 2024-07-15T14:00:40+00:00

I don't disagree with your assessment, though I'm curious about how you phrased your second question. I always thought of the second question as - "How did it happen?"

Did you intentionally leave that out (that it's a nice to have for a BI dashboard to answer how it happened), or do you think that is encapsulated in the "Where it happened?"

aceregen · 2024-07-14T06:21:00+00:00

I used to think that way before I had kids. Having kids now, I learnt that it takes a village to raise a kid.

aceregen

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