Recently I was looking for some simple way to analyze and create graphs from data stored in MySQL tables. I know Grafana can also plot graphs from MySQL tables, but somehow it felt like overkill and you are not using the traditional SQL syntax there. So I was searching for another solution, and it actually took me a while to find it. I might have used the wrong keywords when searching, or the SEO is not the best for this site/project, but in the end, I found Metabase.
In this blog post, I would like to highlight this open source project because I found it very simple and it does the job perfectly for what I wanted it for.
What Is Metabase?
I would describe Metabase as a tool that can provide you a graphical interface to create business intelligence and analytics graphs in minutes. It does not require any previous SQL knowledge, and it has a nice interface where you can simply make analytics with just a few clicks.
Is It Only for MySQL?
It supports a lot of backend databases:
- MySQL
- Postgres
- Druid
- SQL Server
- Redshift
- MongoDB
- Google BigQuery
- SQLite
- H2
- Oracle
- Vertica
- Presto
- Snowflake
- SparkSQL
Installation
It is very simple; you can just call the JAR file or run a docker container and it is done. You can run on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, or on Heroku, or even on Kubernetes.
After installation, you only have to add your datasource and you are good to go.
Creating a Graph
Using a test IMDB database, we simply graph how many movies were created per year. It takes only a few seconds and a few clicks. Of course, we can write a query by ourselves as well, and it is able to plot the result without any problems.
It Has a Lot of Features
Metabase has a lot of features and settings, but here I will just mention a few:
- Work with large databases and configure when and how they should scan the data.
- It can handle multiple users.
- It can handle permissions.
- It works with Slack and you can create questions/graphs from Slack.
- You can create dashboards where you can add your graphs.
- You can share dashboards and graphs.
- Activity log
- Alerts
Conclusion
If you are looking for a very simple data visualization or business analytics tool, I would definitely recommend taking a look at Metabase. Let’s Get Started with Metabase, Free Consultation Here!!
