Metabase Up and Running

Ask questions of your data and gain insights to make better business decisions using the open source business intelligence tool, Metabase

▶Book Description
Metabase is an open source business intelligence tool that helps you use data to answer questions about your business. This book will give you a detailed introduction to using Metabase in your organization to get the most value from your data.

You'll start by installing and setting up Metabase on your local computer. You'll then progress to handling the administration aspect of Metabase by learning how to configure and deploy Metabase, manage accounts, and execute administrative tasks such as adding users and creating permissions and metadata. Complete with examples and detailed instructions, this book shows you how to create different visualizations, charts, and dashboards to gain insights from your data. As you advance, you'll learn how to share the results with peers in your organization and cover production-related aspects such as embedding Metabase and auditing performance. Throughout the book, you'll explore the entire data analytics process—from connecting your data sources, visualizing data, and creating dashboards through to daily reporting.

By the end of this book, you'll be ready to implement Metabase as an integral tool in your organization.

▶What You Will Learn
⦁Explore different types of databases and find out how to connect them to Metabase
⦁Deploy and host Metabase securely using Amazon Web Services
⦁Use Metabase's user interface to filter and aggregate data on single and multiple tables
⦁Use the search functionality to search through tables, dashboards, and metrics
⦁Become a Metabase admin by learning how to add users and create permissions
⦁Answer critical questions for your organization by using the Notebook editor and writing SQL queries

▶Key Features
⦁Deploy Metabase applications to let users across your organization interact with it
⦁Learn to create data visualizations, charts, reports, and dashboards with the help of a variety of examples
⦁Understand how to embed Metabase into your website and send out reports automatically using email and Slack

▶Who This Book Is For
This book is for business analysts, data analysts, data scientists, and other professionals who want to become well-versed with business intelligence and analytics using Metabase. This book will also appeal to anyone who wants to understand their data to extract meaningful insights with the help of practical examples. A basic understanding of data handling and processing is necessary to get started with this book.

▶What this book covers
⦁ Chapter 1, Overview of Metabase, provides an introduction to Metabase, its origin story, and how to install it locally or via Heroku.

⦁ Chapter 2, Hosting Metabase on AWS, takes a deep dive into AWS and teaches you the best practices on how to host Metabase on AWS using their Elastic Beanstalk service.

⦁ Chapter 3, Setting Up Metabase, shows the reader how to set up a subdomain, host Metabase over HTTPS, allow Metabase to send emails over an SMTP server, set up Google Sign-in, and connect Metabase to Slack.

⦁ Chapter 4, Connecting to Databases, explains all the major databases that Metabase works with, and shows the reader how to set up a PostgreSQL database on AWS with sample data.

⦁ Chapter 5, Building Your Data Model, showcases Metabase's powerful admin tools that allow you to curate layers of useful metadata on top of the data in your database.

⦁ Chapter 6, Creating Questions, shows the reader how to explore data in Metabase and answer questions with or without SQL.

⦁ Chapter 7, Creating Visualizations, teaches the reader about every kind of data visualization that can be made in Metabase.

⦁ Chapter 8, Building Dashboards, Pulses, and Collections, shows the reader how to create attractive dashboards and reports, while also learning how to keep everything in Metabase well organized.

⦁ Chapter 9, Using the SQL Console, gives opinionated advice on when and how to use SQL in Metabase such that it will benefit other non-technical users.

⦁ Chapter 10, Advanced Features, Getting Help, and Contributing, showcases some of Metabase's special features and introduces the reader to the Metabase community.