Introduction
Data Flow is one of two tools provided by Piano Analytics to facilitate the extraction of raw, granular, and comprehensive analytics data.
Data Flow will provide incremental granular data via “flows” in multiple files at regular intervals based on your flows’ configuration.
Data Sharing is available as an alternative to Data Flow to access granular and comprehensive data extracts. Read the dedicated documentation for Data Sharing here for more information.
The raw, granular, and comprehensive data provided by Data Flow or Data Sharing is perfectly suited for many advanced, custom projects tailored to your business needs.
Data Schema
Event Table
A data schema represents a schematic blueprint for an analytics solution in much the same way an architectural blueprint serves as the foundation for a house. I.e. it defines how many “rooms” the house has and what size they will be.
The Snowflake data schema is designed to be both scalable and flexible. In this sense, one can effectively build a house of any size, with as many rooms as one wants.
When you use Data Flow provided by Piano Analytics, it’s a set package. This means one data table (i.e. a house with one room), that’s referred to as an “event” table.
Events & Properties
Event tables are populated with events. On each line, Piano stores an event that occurred during the customer journey (e.g. pageview, subscription, video start, chat start). These events can quickly add up and number in the millions and billions. Piano can store an unlimited amount of event types.
These events also have properties to characterize them (e.g. page name, device type, traffic source, subscription term, etc.), Piano provides over 1400 columns (400 standard, 1000 custom) for event properties that are shared across the whole event table.
Benefits of this data schema
By using such a structure, Piano can provided raw, granular & comprehensive data on the customer journey at the macro or micro levels, making the number of use cases for it endless. This allows you to build a highly customized data model that’s tailored to your business and your objectives.
Additional resources:
[Webinar] The Data Model Strategy: Make Analytics Work for Your Business, Not the Other Way Around