Chapter 1: Getting Started with Alteryx

In the current century, one of the core functions of all companies is to retrieve data from its source and get it into the hands of your company's analysts, decision makers, and data scientists. This data flow allows businesses to make decisions, supported by empirical evidence, quickly and with confidence. The capability also gives businesses a robust process for delivering the data flows with a significant advantage over their competition.

Creating robust data flows requires that end users find the datasets and trust the raw data source. End users need to know what transformations were applied to the dataset to build trust. They also need to know who to talk to if their needs change. Alteryx gives data engineers and end users a single unified place to create data pipelines and discover data resources. It also provides the context that gives end users confidence when making decisions based on any of those datasets.

This book will describe how to build and deploy data engineering pipelines with Alteryx. We will learn how to examine to apply DataOps methods to build high-quality datasets. We will also learn the techniques required for monitoring the pipelines when they are running in an automated production environment.

This chapter will introduce the Alteryx platform as a whole and the major software components within the platform. Then, we will see how those components fit together to create a data pipeline, and how Alteryx can improve your development speed and build confidence throughout your data team.

Once we understand the Alteryx platform, we will look into Alteryx Designer and familiarize ourselves with the interface. Next, we will set a baseline for building an Alteryx workflow and use Alteryx to create standalone data pipelines.

Next, we will investigate the server-based components of the Alteryx platform, Alteryx Server, and Alteryx Connect. We will learn how Alteryx Server can automate the pipeline execution, scale the efforts and work of your data engineering team, and serve as a central location where workflows are stored and shared. We will also learn how Alteryx Connect is used to find data sources throughout an enterprise, build user confidence with data cataloging, and build trust in the data sources by maintaining the lineage.

Finally, we will see how this book can help your data engineering work and link each part of the data engineering pipeline with the Alteryx platform applications.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Understanding the Alteryx platform
• Using Alteryx Designer
• Leveraging Alteryx Server and Alteryx Connect
• Using this book in your data engineering work