Sigma Workbook: A Spreadsheet for Cloud Data Warehouses

TL;DR

Sigma Workbook is an interactive spreadsheet tool that enables business users to perform scalable, visual data analysis directly on cloud data warehouses by translating user interactions into SQL queries.

Contribution

It introduces a user-friendly spreadsheet-like interface that dynamically generates SQL queries for analysis in cloud data warehouses, enhancing accessibility and scalability.

Findings

Demonstrated effectiveness through real-life use cases

Showed ease of use for business users

Proved scalability and expressivity of the system

Abstract

Cloud data warehouses (CDWs) bring large-scale data and compute power closer to users in enterprises. However, existing tools for analyzing data in CDWs are either limited in ad-hoc transformations or difficult to use for business users. Here we introduce Sigma Workbook, a new interactive system that enables business users to easily perform a visual analysis of data in CDWs at scale. For this, Sigma Workbook provides an accessible spreadsheet-like interface for analysis through direct manipulation. Sigma Workbook dynamically constructs matching SQL queries from user interactions, building on the versatility and expressivity of SQL. Constructed queries are directly executed on CDWs, leveraging the superior characteristics of the new generation CDWs, including scalability. We demonstrate Sigma Workbook through 3 real-life use cases -- cohort analysis, sessionization, and data augmentation -- and underline Workbook's ease of use, scalability, and expressivity.