The dbt meta tag
Documenting for info and ego
After working with dbt for nearly 2 years at GitLab, I realized we needed a place to store more crap data. Specifically, metadata about our dbt models. I wanted a place to document governance (ownership, sensitivity) information as close to the actual models as possible.
This need resulted in PR #2015 to dbt-core. This PR added the meta key in schema.yml and sources.yml. Credit to Maggie Hays for the original issue.
This article documents how many companies have used the meta key as a part of their product offering.1 I’m also documenting the amount of VC funding for each company as I’m pretty sure the full amount of that funding can be attributed to their use of meta2.
In alphabetical order, here is an ongoing list of tools that utilize the meta tag in their product. Thanks to Data Twitter for helping me build this list. And thanks to Pardis’ original Data ∩ Water article for inspiring me to document things like this.
Datafold
VC Funding: $22.2M
DataHub
VC Funding: $9M
Fal
VC Funding: $0
Hashboard (frmly Glean.io)
VC Funding: $7M
Hightouch
VC Funding: $54.2M
Immuta
Docs Link - I think, hard to find proper documentation on this.
VC Funding: $258.2M
Keboola
Docs Link - Tweet link because I can’t find it in the docs.
VC Funding: $4.5M
Lightdash
VC Funding: $10.8M
Metriql
VC Funding: Unknown - Acquired by LiveRamp
Monte Carlo Data
VC Funding: $236M
SELECT
VC Funding: $0
ThoughtSpot
VC Funding: $663.7M3
Zenlytic
VC Funding: $6.4M
It's nice to have it all documented out like this. I'm proud of this OSS contribution and the value it continues to drive for a variety of companies and data teams. Please let me know if you find any more companies using it!4
Why you ask? Because I need an ego boost every once in a while. Also, it’s interesting to see what a little thing can unlock.
I’ve got the jokes y’all.
Technically the majority of their funding came before the meta key existed.
I’d previously had Select Star and Secoda on this list but couldn’t validate they used meta.