Book Image

Metabase Up and Running

By : Tim Abraham
Book Image

Metabase Up and Running

By: Tim Abraham

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Section 1: Installing and Deploying Metabase
4
Section 2: Setting Up Your Instance and Asking Questions of Your Data
12
Section 3: Advanced Functionality and Paid Features

Summary

At this point, we have learned what Metabase is, what it is used for, and who should use it. We've outlined the four types of Metabase users: admins, consumers, analysts, and power users – the latter of which you will be by the end of this book!

We have installed Metabase locally, and in the cloud, using Heroku. We have an instance of Metabase running and have signed up for an account. We're all but ready to add other users and start analyzing our data.

At the same time, we now understand the limitations of using Heroku's Free Tier to administrate our Metabase instance. As mentioned throughout the chapter, the recommended way to run Metabase is with AWS. Doing so is a much more involved process than the one-click method Heroku offers, but a necessary step for those who want more control and oversight.

In Chapter 2, Hosting Metabase on AWS, we will take a detailed look at running Metabase with AWS.