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by seektable 1538 days ago
It looks like MetricFlow shines in constructing SQL queries on-demand, which means that it should be directly used by a BI tool, am I right with this?.. Generation of the static SQL (with CLI) for each report doesn't seem very usable on practice.

In other words, BI tools needs to have a special connector that automatically utilizes MetricFlow Python API (or CLI). What BI tools already can use MetricFlow in this way (open-source part of the project)?

Actually I'm asking about that as a BI tool vendor. We have added an ability to use custom connectors (web API) so potentially this kind of connector can use MetricFlow for SQL generation.
1 comments
mitchelllc 1538 days ago
Looks like it supports GraphQL APIs[1], and downstream BI applications should be able to consume metric results from MetricFlow through GraphQL.

[1] https://github.com/transform-data/metricflow#features

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nicholashandel 1534 days ago
That's right! That's a potential option for an integration.

The other options are: - Transform's JDBC can be used to connect to tools that have SQL interfaces like Mode, Hex, Deepnote, etc.: https://docs.transform.co/docs/api/sql/sql-overview - Materializations can be exported as constructed data marts to tools like Tableau / Looker that take in constructed data sources: https://docs.transform.co/docs/metricflow/reference/material...

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