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Dagster Data Engineering Glossary:


Data Integration

Combine data from different sources to create a unified view for analysis or reporting.

Data integration definition:

Data integration refers to the process of combining data from multiple sources into a single, unified dataset. This is an important step in many data analysis and machine learning projects, as data is often stored in different formats and locations.

Integration involves several steps, including data cleaning, transformation, and normalization to ensure that the data from different sources can be combined. This can involve resolving naming conflicts, converting data types, and removing duplicate data.

Data integration example using Python and PySpark:

Please note that you need to have the necessary Python libraries installed in your Python environment to run the following code examples.

Python provides several libraries and tools for integrating data, such as pandas, NumPy, and Apache Spark. These tools can help with data cleaning, transformation, and normalization, as well as providing a range of functions and algorithms for analyzing and visualizing the integrated dataset.

For example, let's say you are working on a project to analyze customer behavior for an e-commerce site. You might need to integrate data from several sources, including website logs, customer transaction data, and social media activity. Using Python, you can use tools such as pandas and NumPy to clean and transform the data, and then integrate it into a single dataset for analysis.

Here's an example of data integration using Apache Spark:

Let's say we have two data sources, customers and orders, and we want to integrate them based on the customer_id field. We can load both data sources into Spark DataFrames, and then join them on the customer_id field:

from pyspark.sql import SparkSession

# Create a SparkSession
spark = SparkSession.builder.appName("DataIntegration").getOrCreate()

# Load the customers data into a DataFrame
customers_df = spark.read.csv("customers.csv", header=True, inferSchema=True)

# Load the orders data into a DataFrame
orders_df = spark.read.csv("orders.csv", header=True, inferSchema=True)

# Join the two DataFrames on the customer_id field
joined_df = customers_df.join(orders_df, "customer_id")

# Show the resulting integrated data
joined_df.show()

In this example, customers.csv might look like this:

customer_id,name,email
1,Alice,alice@example.com
2,Bob,bob@example.com
3,Charlie,charlie@example.com

And orders.csv might look like this:

order_id,customer_id,product,quantity
1001,1,Widget,3
1002,1,Gadget,1
1003,2,Widget,5
1004,3,Thingy,2

The resulting joined_df DataFrame would look like this:

+-----------+------+-----------------+-------+---------+
|customer_id|  name|            email|order_id|  product|
+-----------+------+-----------------+-------+---------+
|          1| Alice|alice@example.com|   1001|   Widget|
|          1| Alice|alice@example.com|   1002|   Gadget|
|          2|   Bob|  bob@example.com|   1003|   Widget|
|          3|Charlie|charlie@example.com|   1004|Thingy|
+-----------+------+-----------------+-------+---------+

This integrated DataFrame combines the data from both sources into a single dataframe based on the customer_id field. We are now set up to perform further analysis or transformations on this integrated data using Apache Spark.


Other data engineering terms related to
Data Management:
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Append

Adding or attaching new records or data items to the end of an existing dataset, database table, file, or list.
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Archive

Move rarely accessed data to a low-cost, long-term storage solution to reduce costs. Store data for long-term retention and compliance.
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Augment

Add new data or information to an existing dataset to enhance its value.
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Auto-materialize

The automatic execution of computations and the persistence of their results.
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Backup

Create a copy of data to protect against loss or corruption.
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Batch Processing

Process large volumes of data all at once in a single operation or batch.
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Cache

Store expensive computation results so they can be reused, not recomputed.
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Categorize

Organizing and classifying data into different categories, groups, or segments.
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Checkpointing

Saving the state of a process at certain points so that it can be restarted from that point in case of failure.
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Deduplicate

Identify and remove duplicate records or entries to improve data quality.
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Deserialize

Deserialization is essentially the reverse process of serialization. See: 'Serialize'.
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Dimensionality

Analyzing the number of features or attributes in the data to improve performance.
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Encapsulate

The bundling of data with the methods that operate on that data.
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Enrich

Enhance data with additional information from external sources.
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Export

Extract data from a system for use in another system or application.
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Graph Theory

A powerful tool to model and understand intricate relationships within our data systems.
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Idempotent

An operation that produces the same result each time it is performed.
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Index

Create an optimized data structure for fast search and retrieval.
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Lineage

Understand how data moves through a pipeline, including its origin, transformations, dependencies, and ultimate consumption.
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Linearizability

Ensure that each individual operation on a distributed system appear to occur instantaneously.
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Materialize

Executing a computation and persisting the results into storage.
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Memoize

Store the results of expensive function calls and reusing them when the same inputs occur again.
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Merge

Combine data from multiple datasets into a single dataset.
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Model

Create a conceptual representation of data objects.
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Monitor

Track data processing metrics and system health to ensure high availability and performance.
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Named Entity Recognition

Locate and classify named entities in text into pre-defined categories.
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Parse

Interpret and convert data from one format to another.
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Partition

Data partitioning is a technique that data engineers and ML engineers use to divide data into smaller subsets for improved performance.
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Prep

Transform your data so it is fit-for-purpose.
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Preprocess

Transform raw data before data analysis or machine learning modeling.
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Primary Key

A unique identifier for a record in a database table that helps maintain data integrity.
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Replicate

Create a copy of data for redundancy or distributed processing.

Scaling

Increasing the capacity or performance of a system to handle more data or traffic.
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Schema Inference

Automatically identify the structure of a dataset.
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Schema Mapping

Translate data from one schema or structure to another to facilitate data integration.
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Secondary Index

Improve the efficiency of data retrieval in a database or storage system.
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Software-defined Asset

A declarative design pattern that represents a data asset through code.
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Synchronize

Ensure that data in different systems or databases are in sync and up-to-date.
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Validate

Check data for completeness, accuracy, and consistency.
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Version

Maintain a history of changes to data for auditing and tracking purposes.
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