Episode Details

Summary

A majority of the time spent in data engineering is copying data between systems to make the information available for different purposes. This introduces challenges such as keeping information synchronized, managing schema evolution, building transformations to match the expectations of the destination systems. H.O. Maycotte was faced with these same challenges but at a massive scale, leading him to question if there is a better way. After tasking some of his top engineers to consider the problem in a new light they created the Pilosa engine. In this episode H.O. explains how using Pilosa as the core he built the Molecula platform to eliminate the need to copy data between systems in able to make it accessible for analytical and machine learning purposes. He also discusses the challenges that he faces in helping potential users and customers understand the shift in thinking that this creates, and how the system is architected to make it possible. This is a fascinating conversation about what the future looks like when you revisit your assumptions about how systems are designed.

Announcements

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• Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing H.O. Maycotte about Molecula, a cloud based feature store based on the open source Pilosa project

Interview