Skip to Content
97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know
book

97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know

by Tobias Macey
June 2021
Intermediate to advanced
264 pages
7h 19m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Audiobook available
Content preview from 97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know

Chapter 77. The Three Invaluable Benefits of Open Source for Testing Data Quality

Tom Baeyens

As a software engineer turned data engineer, I can attest to the importance of data in organizations today. I can also attest to the fact that the software engineering principles of writing unit tests and monitoring applications should be applied to data. However, even though people know they should test data, they often don’t have the good practices or knowledge to approach it. Enter open source. In this chapter, I explore three areas in which open source software presents data-testing benefits: for the data engineer, for the enterprise as a whole, and for the tools developers create and use.

Open source tools are developed by engineers, for engineers; if you’re looking to start working with a data-testing tool that will naturally fit into your workflows, you have to start with open source. Open source software can also be embedded into data-engineering pipelines with ease: unencumbered by licensing restrictions or hidden costs, data engineers can be assured that open source tools will get to work quickly and easily.

For the enterprise, open source options have become a great way of getting started with data-quality initiatives. Implementing basic data testing and achieving better data quality in just a few days helps build the business case and starts uncovering data issues, helping ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know

97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know

Camille Fournier
Fundamentals of Data Engineering

Fundamentals of Data Engineering

Joe Reis, Matt Housley

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781492062400Errata Page