Metabase Tutorial

This is how I used Metabase to visualise data from Snowflake

Metabase is an open source data visualisation/Business Intelligence tool that allows you to query data from multiple data sources in an easy to understand interface. It takes literally 5–10 minutes to setup and supports most of the modern features for data visualisations. You can share your dashboards which could be auto-refreshed at desired time duration. Metabase supports advanced authorisation schemes where one can expose data to a limited set of roles or hide the data completely. For a complete list of features I encourage visiting their website.

Step 1: Install Docker

Visit site- https://docs.docker.com/desktop/install/mac-install/ and download the docker.dmg file based on your mac chipset type.

Follow the instructions to install dmg

Step 2: Install Metabase

* Please make sure that docker is properly installed and it is running before proceeding

Follow the installation instructions on this page - https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/installation-and-operation/running-metabase-on-docker

A) Download the latest image of Metabase from docker hub

docker pull metabase/metabase:latest

B) Start the Metabase container

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --name metabase metabase/metabase

You should see the following page if you visit the url:- http://localhost:3000

C) Setup Metabase

Click the button Let's get started on the browser and follow the instructions.

Fill-in the details asked on the screen

D) Add data source

As of date of writing this article, 13 data sources like MySQL, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, Snowflake etc. were supported.

We will connect to a Snowflake instance. Enter the connection details as shown below.

Select Warehouse and Database name

Connect Database

I do not want to send usage data to metabase. So I de-selected the option and click Finish

At this stage you should see the SF tables getting synched (at the bottom right corner)

My snowflake instance has following database structure

Metabase > Browse data shows

Browse data in Weather table

Let us now perform some operations on the data.

a) Find all the orders placed by a given customer, Use the Filter option

b) Create a bar graph of total amount of orders placed by a given customer in different years

You may now save this as a dashboard using the Save button.

The dashboards can be added as a bookmark on your Metabase home page

If you like this article, consider giving a thumbs-up.

Follow me on LinkedIn.