Preface

Metabase is a piece of analytics software that enables your entire organization to derive insights from your data. While analytics software has been around for some time, the offerings have tended to be quite expensive. Metabase, on the other hand, is open source and free. Because the free offering comes with no dedicated engineering support, non-technical users might struggle with getting everything up and running. That's why this book was written. No matter your technical background, this book will gently guide you through the process of hosting, running, setting up, and building out a robust analytics platform using Metabase.

You'll learn how to configure an environment on Amazon Web Services (AWS) that you can use to host a scalable and customizable instance of Metabase. Once it's deployed, you'll learn how to use your own subdomain for Metabase and set up an email server or use Google Sign-in to invite other users. You'll learn the best practices for connecting to databases, and even build your own database using some sample data specific to this book. You'll get to know Metabase through and through, learning how to curate your data model, create powerful charts, build beautiful dashboards, leverage your SQL skills, and schedule reports to go out via email or Slack.