Dataclips Power Insights at Heroku

Summary

Heroku Dataclips let employees create SQL queries through a web GUI against Heroku Postgres databases, then share results through unique URLs or HTTP endpoints returning CSV or JSON. At Heroku, Dataclips reduce dependence on engineers or DBAs by letting departments retrieve fresh production metrics, build dashboards, track product usage, identify deprecated-feature users, and investigate suspicious signup patterns. To make querying safer, the organization runs dataclips against a read-only Postgres follower rather than the leader; writes propagate from leader to followers in close to real-time. Business Operations also teaches SQL and the internal schema through Office Hours, aiming to replace recurring one-off requests with self-service query skills.

Takeaways

1. 1

   A dataclip URL can be shared through email or Slack, while its JSON endpoint can feed lightweight dashboards that periodically render live data.

2. 2

   Heroku used dataclips to measure Heroku Button usage, distinguish CLI deployments from button-generated deployments, and identify applications still using the Cedar-14 stack.

3. 3

   Running queries on a Postgres follower protects the leader database from potentially harmful SQL while keeping replicated writes close to real time.