Coming Soon: Addressing timezone inconsistency

🚨 Default behavior change coming next week 🚨

We have recently discovered that when executing queries, there are some cases where our DATETIME columns contain timezone information, and other cases where they do not. This is primarily an issue that arises with columns containing date/time information in uploaded files (we do not see this with live tables). We have decided to address this inconsistency. Starting next week, query result columns of type DATETIME will no longer contain timezone information, while columns of type DATETIMESTAMP will always contain timezone information.

The impact of this change shouldn’t be significant, and most users will see no change. However, if you have queries across ingested data which aggregate on DATETIME columns, or do DATE_ADD() style calculations, you may notice differences in your results depending on your current timezone.

If you are impacted by this change, here are some ways to clarify your intent w.r.t. timezones:

  1. CAST the resulting column to a DATETIMESTAMP to force timezones, or DATETIME to strip timezones (documentation)
  2. Use AT_TIME_ZONE() to explicitly state your timezone (documentation)
  3. Ensure that the table column type is set to be of type DATETIMESTAMP or DATETIME (documentation)

Note: If timezone information is desired, but not defined, UTC is assumed. 

Please contact support@data.world with any questions or concerns. As always, we’re happy to help.

New: Groundbreaking "deep brain" integration

data.world is very excited to announce our new deep brain integration.

Now data consumers simply need to think about what data they want, and data.world will return governed, curated data. It also supports cataloging of business terminology straight from subject matter experts.

When we originally envisioned the feature, our design inspiration was to provide an "easy button." However Jon Loyens, co-founder and CPO, famously then said "what if there was no button at all?"

A future release will support agile data governance workflows, such as data access approvals. Integration is quick and relatively painless, though upgrades require a bit of effort and minor outpatient surgery.

New Gra.fo API: Export document as TTL or OWL

Head over the Gra.fo API Documentation to learn more about how to use the Gra.fo public API to export your model as TTL or OWL. The export API is designed for use with build scripts, version control tools, integrations, or to upload your model into other tools, like data.world.

Fun fact: Ever wonder why our adorable mascot, Sparkle, is an OWL? Now you know!

Looking for the API Documentation? We've added a link to the user menu in Gra.fo:

Gra.fo supports several additional export formats from the document page. These options can be found under the File menu.


March 2021 monthly product update

Here is a roundup of some of the key features we released last month, February 2021 -- Looker metadata support, custom metadata field default edit behavior improvements, Gra.fo enhancements, and dataset sync webhook notifications.

Gra.fo navigation and linking improvements

Check out recent UX improvements to Gra.fo, our visual knowledge graph modeling tool. 

  1. To quickly zoom out to see the full graph, use the keyboard shortcut:
    OPTION (ALT) + SHIFT + 0
  2. To zoom to a specific concept:
    OPTION (ALT) + SHIFT + click concept
  3. You can now deeplink directly to a concept in the graph using the Copy link to concept option in the concept menu. Watch the video to see how we use this feature to move fluidly between a data.world catalog and Gra.fo.

Gra.fo is a companion product to data.world with a 30 day free trial of premium team features. Visit Gra.fo to learn more, or reach out to help@data.world.

Featured Search Results for Data Partners

Relevant data partners now appear at the top of some search results as featured results, making it easier to find high-quality, reliable datasets in search. Featured results are disabled for private installs.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we help teams find the right data vendors for their projects, drop us a line at concierge@data.world.


Lineage panel moved closer to technical details

For customers leveraging data artifact lineage, it was a little counterintuitive that the high-level business lineage diagram would show up below your dataset relationships but above all your other relationships. So, we've moved it to just above the Technical details section.

Metrics update: Nov 18, 2020

First of all, this update includes a couple fixes:

  • Visits - New Users By Month was based off of pageviews, which can be affected by ad blockers or restrictive browser settings. It has been switched to use a more robust source of events. This may slightly increase this metric going forward.
  • Visits - Unique Visitors to Date was based off of pageviews, which can be affected by ad blockers or restrictive browser settings. It has been switched to use a more robust source of events. This may slightly increase this metric going forward.

Next, we've added an additional table/report:

  • Users love leveraging our built-in query workbench and federated query capabilities, however often it could be challenging for administrators to easily troubleshoot when queries go wrong or audit what queries are being executed.
  • The new Events - Queries report in your ddw-metrics dataset now provides quick access to audit level details on what queries are being run, by whom, including what the query text is, for fast troubleshooting and effective auditing.
  • This report is currently only available for multi-tenant enterprise customers -- it will be rolled out to single-tenant customers in the next few business days.


Naming update: Members, access, and grant access

Previously, data.world used the words people, contributors, invite, share, and a few other names in various places in the application, which caused confusion.

We now use Members to show the users that are part of an organization, Access as the tab where you can manage access at a more granular level on datasets or other resource pages, and Grant access as a consistent call to action to add additional members.

Also, the Member organization role has been updated to be Basic member to be clear and unique from members more generally.


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