The Hightouch Blog - For data and analytics engineers

Heroku Connect: the definitive guide

Learn everything there is to know about Heroku Connect and why Reverse ETL is a better alternative.

The definitive guide to API integrations

Learn everything you need to know about API Integrations including API types, authentication, reading, writing, deployment, monitoring, and scheduling.

Why your alerting should be configurable

Learn how you can adopt configurable alerting across your entire data stack.

What is data ingestion? | The definitive guide

Learn what data ingestion is, why it matters, and how you can use it to power your analytics and activate your data.

Airflow alternatives: a look at Prefect and Dagster

We take a deep dive into Airflow, Prefect, and Dagster and the differences between the three!

ETL vs. Reverse ETL: the technical differences

Discover the technical differences between Reverse ETL and ETL/ELT and learn how they work behind the scenes.

Azure Synapse vs Snowflake: the definitive guide

Discover the key differences between Azure Synapse and Snowflake around architecture, pricing, security, compliance, data support, administration, data protection, performance, etc...

7 useful Zapier integrations or “Zaps”

Review 7 most useful Zapier integrations or "Zaps" and learn why Reverse ETL is a simpler solution.

The top 5 most useful Workato integrations & recipes

Review the top 5 Workato integrations and recipes and learn why Reverse ETL is a simpler solution.

The top 5 most useful Tray.io integrations & recipes

Review the top 5 Tray.io integrations and recipes and learn why Reverse ETL is a simpler solution.

Why every tool in the Modern Data Stack needs Git

Leverage the power of software development and DevOps and implement the same best practices you use in your production code in the context of data integration with Git.

How to enrich Hubspot data in 6 steps

Learn How Hightouch can help you enrich your Hubspot data in 6 easy steps.

How to enrich Salesforce data in 6 steps

Learn How Hightouch can help you enrich your Salesforce data in 6 easy steps.

A deep dive into Hex and the future of data apps

Learn about Hex, a collaborative data analysis platform, and the future of data apps built on top of the data warehouse

Looker Actions: the definitive guide

Learn everything about Looker Actions, how it automates workflows to take action on data, where it falls flat, and the alternatives for your data needs.

Matillion: the definitive guide

Learn everything about Matillion and Matillion Data Loader, how they offer ETL & ELT services to solve data integration problems, where they fall flat, and alternatives for your data needs.

The state of automated testing in the data warehouse

A deep dive into automated data testing, why it matters and the top tools to consider

Exploring data lineage with OpenLineage

In this post, we ask what is data lineage and take a detailed dive into OpenLineage and how it aims to unify metadata and lineage across tools to make data lineage easier to reason about.

Automate your external reporting with the Modern Data Stack

With the right infrastructure, reporting can become truly routine. Even more than that, it’s a chance to demonstrate your value to the company and customers.

What is a data Lakehouse?

The Data Warehouse and the Data Lake both have their strengths and weaknesses. Like yin and yang, they often coexist within the same data stack and this has given rise to a hybrid category — the Data Lakehouse!

Why data engineers should not manage dbt

dbt transformations are critical and should be owned by data analysts and scientists because they have the most context to make the data a lot more usable for business teams.

Data engineers shouldn't write Reverse ETL: a guide to building a happy data engineering department

This guide sheds light on the state of data engineering in 2021 as well as talks about the rise of Reverse ETL as a core component of the Modern Data Stack.

Modern data warehouse modelling: the definitive guide - part 2

This guide on modern data warehouse modelling explores the current sentiment toward Kimball as well as shines some light on Wide Tables and what the data community thinks of them.

Modern data warehouse modelling: the definitive guide - part 1

A guide on modern data warehouse modelling, exploring best practices from the community and famous modelling paradigms like Kimball’s Dimensional Modelling, Inmon, Data Vault and Wide Tables.

dbt Snapshots: the definitive guide

One of the most important questions that any analytics-focused company should strive to answer is “How has my data changed over time?” dbt provides a simple solution addressing this exact problem called dbt snapshots.

dbt Cloud: 4 reasons for data teams to embrace it

The biggest benefit that dbt Cloud offers to data teams and analytics engineers? Freedom from distractions, and the ability to focus where you can add unique value making sense of your company's data.

How Datadog operationalizes their data warehouse to supercharge their business teams

In conversation with Romoli Bakshi, Engineering Team Lead at Datadog who walks us through the process her team follows to operationalize their data warehouse in order to supercharge their business teams.

How to monitor customer usage in Slack via SQL

The Slack integration on Hightouch enables you to pull the resources and metrics important to your business via SQL and then get notified when these resources and metrics change, right within Slack of course!

Syncing custom objects and fields from your data warehouse to HubSpot

We use and love HubSpot and so do our customers and therefore we decided to draft this guide that walks you through the process of syncing custom objects and fields from your Data Warehouse to HubSpot.

Identity resolution in SQL

What is identity, and how does it relate to customer data? Identity can have many different meanings but essentially, it involves unifying different pieces of data about your customers. Read on to learn more.