How to Define and Identify the Value of Data Products
A framework for defining and measuring the real business value of data products in plain terms, covering trust, usability, adoption, and the pitfalls that undermine it.
Blog
Thinking on semantic data modeling and the universal semantic layer, plus release notes on what's new in Ellie.
The End of the Data Pipeline Diagram
Why traditional pipeline diagrams fail modern data teams, assuming linear static flows, prioritizing tools over meaning, and going stale right after kickoff, and how collaborative, living data models anchored in ownership and business purpose replace them.
Ellie 8.8: Turn Ad-Hoc Relationships into Reusable Standards
Ellie 8.8 introduces Glossary Relationships, letting teams define relationship types once in the glossary and reuse them consistently across every model.
Introducing the Next-Gen Conversational Source Navigator
Ellie.ai's new AI-powered chat capability, Lumi, lets you converse with your data to find relevant sources, enrich metadata into plain language, and map relationships across systems.
3 Things to Consider When Deploying Data Catalogs
Three practices that make data catalog deployments succeed: anchoring the catalog in a business glossary, designing it like a product, and aligning it with your modeling workflow.
7 Modeling Traps That Kill Data Product Momentum
Misaligned definitions, brittle architecture, and confusing diagrams stall data products. Seven common modeling traps, how to spot them early, and what healthy modeling practice looks like instead.
Ellie 8.7: Naming Conventions
Ellie's new Naming Conventions feature enforces consistent naming across models, entities, and attributes, giving teams real-time warnings without blocking their workflow.
Ellie 8.6: Reusable Physical Entities
Ellie 8.6 brings reusable physical entities, a reworked foreign key workflow with Draft FKs and a new constraint editor, and relocates DDL export to its own menu.
What Figma Did for Designers, Ellie.ai Is Doing for Data Teams
Draws a parallel to Figma's shift from static design files to real-time collaborative canvases, arguing data modeling needs the same shift from siloed diagrams in tools like Lucidchart to a shared, living model with real-time co-editing, commenting, approval workflows, and version branching.
Should Data Mesh Teams Still Model Together?
Data mesh's domain-driven autonomy can tip into isolation, producing semantic drift, duplicated effort, and conflicting dashboards; the fix is a shared modeling fabric that keeps domains aligned on core definitions like "Revenue" or "Churn Rate" without reviving centralized bottlenecks.
The Hidden Cost of Misaligned Data Strategy
Five hidden costs of skipping conceptual modeling, wasted time, accumulating technical debt, low stakeholder trust, poor decision-making, and compliance risk, plus a myth-busting look at why "we'll just fix it later" ends up costing more than modeling upfront.
Ellie 8.5: Collibra
Ellie 8.5 extends the Ellie–Collibra integration to the logical layer with a new Relationship Editor, attribute sync, configurable mappings, and full traceability between systems.
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