Personal Picks: Data Product News (May 14, 2025)

※This is an English translation of the original Japanese article. Hi, I'm Sagara. As a consultant specializing in the Modern Data Stack, I've noticed a constant stream of new information in this field. In this article, I'll summarize some of the Modern Data Stack-related news that caught my attention over the past couple of weeks. ※Disclaimer: This article does not cover all the latest updates for the mentioned products. I'm only including information that I personally found interesting, based on my own judgment and preferences. Data Extract/Load Fivetran Fivetran Announces Acquisition of Census Fivetran has announced its acquisition of Census. I've been writing this MDS summary blog for about two years now, and this was the most shocking news I've encountered... This acquisition will transform Fivetran into a platform capable of bidirectional data integration between various applications/data sources and DWHs/DBs! https://www.fivetran.com/press/fivetran-signs-agreement-to-acquire-census-delivering-the-first-end-to-end-data-movement-platform-for-the-ai-era https://www.getcensus.com/blog/census-joins-forces-with-fivetran Data Warehouse/Data Lakehouse Snowflake New "Generation 2 standard warehouses" with Improved Performance Released New "Generation 2 standard warehouses" with improved performance have been released (currently available only in select regions). https://docs.snowflake.com/en/release-notes/2025/other/2025-05-05-gen2-standard-warehouses I actually tested how different the speed is compared to traditional warehouses and wrote a blog post about it. I found that Generation 2 warehouses particularly excel with "queries involving large scan volumes and heavy aggregation processing." https://dev.classmethod.jp/articles/snowflake-generation-2-standard-warehouses/ Snowflake Releases "Programmatic access tokens" - Usable in Password Fields for Tableau and Power BI Snowflake has released a new feature called "Programmatic access tokens." https://docs.snowflake.com/en/release-notes/2025/other/2025-04-30-programmatic-access-tokens The great things about this feature are the following two points: They can be issued even for users with TYPE=SERVICE. By entering the access token value in the password field, authentication can be done from existing BI tools and other applications. I've also tried this out and summarized it in the blog post below. I hope you find it helpful. https://dev.classmethod.jp/articles/snowflake-programmatic-access-tokens/ Blog Post Explaining Snowflake Egress Cost Optimizer (ECO) An official Snowflake blog post explains the Snowflake Egress Cost Optimizer (ECO), a feature that allows you to "pay egress costs only once when replicating the same data across multiple clouds/regions." https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/new-regions-egress-cost-optimizer/ This feature was released on April 15, 2025, and is now generally available (GA). https://docs.snowflake.com/en/release-notes/2025/other/2025-04-15-eco-ga Business Intelligence Tableau 2025.2 Coming Soon The "Coming Soon" page has been updated with details about the Tableau 2025.2 release. Personally, I'm particularly interested in the enhancements to Show Me and the Tableau app for Google Workspace. https://www.tableau.com/products/coming-soon Data Catalog OpenMetadata OpenMetadata Receives Grant from Bloomberg's FOSS Contributor Fund The official OpenMetadata blog announced that OpenMetadata has been awarded a grant from Bloomberg's FOSS Contributor Fund. I hadn't heard of the "Bloomberg FOSS Contributor Fund" before, but it seems to be a fund launched in 2023 by Bloomberg's Open Source Program Office (OSPO) and Corporate Philanthropy department, awarding grants of $10,000 each to up to three projects quarterly. Past recipients include OSS projects like PostgreSQL, Apache Airflow, Homebrew, curl, pandas, Apache Arrow, Trino, and Apache Iceberg. https://blog.open-metadata.org/bloomberg-foss-fund-honors-openmetadata-with-open-source-grant-a35a2799565c Data Orchestration Prefect Prefect Announces Prefect Serverless and Adds Starter and Team Pricing Tiers Prefect has announced "Prefect Serverless" as a new execution environment. All Prefect Cloud accounts include Serverless execution credits, which are consumed only during actual execution time. https://www.prefect.io/blog/introducing-prefect-serverless Concurrently, they have added new Starter and Team pricing plans. With plans starting from $100 USD per month, I feel the pricing structure has become more accessible. https://www.prefect.io/blog/introducing-two-new-self-serve-plans-for-prefect-cloud https://www.prefect.io/pricing

May 14, 2025 - 01:58

Personal Picks: Data Product News (May 14, 2025)

※This is an English translation of the original Japanese article.

Hi, I'm Sagara.

As a consultant specializing in the Modern Data Stack, I've noticed a constant stream of new information in this field.

In this article, I'll summarize some of the Modern Data Stack-related news that caught my attention over the past couple of weeks.

※Disclaimer: This article does not cover all the latest updates for the mentioned products. I'm only including information that I personally found interesting, based on my own judgment and preferences.

Data Extract/Load

Fivetran

Fivetran Announces Acquisition of Census

Fivetran has announced its acquisition of Census. I've been writing this MDS summary blog for about two years now, and this was the most shocking news I've encountered...

This acquisition will transform Fivetran into a platform capable of bidirectional data integration between various applications/data sources and DWHs/DBs!

https://www.fivetran.com/press/fivetran-signs-agreement-to-acquire-census-delivering-the-first-end-to-end-data-movement-platform-for-the-ai-era

https://www.getcensus.com/blog/census-joins-forces-with-fivetran

Data Warehouse/Data Lakehouse

Snowflake

New "Generation 2 standard warehouses" with Improved Performance Released

New "Generation 2 standard warehouses" with improved performance have been released (currently available only in select regions).

https://docs.snowflake.com/en/release-notes/2025/other/2025-05-05-gen2-standard-warehouses

I actually tested how different the speed is compared to traditional warehouses and wrote a blog post about it. I found that Generation 2 warehouses particularly excel with "queries involving large scan volumes and heavy aggregation processing."

https://dev.classmethod.jp/articles/snowflake-generation-2-standard-warehouses/

Snowflake Releases "Programmatic access tokens" - Usable in Password Fields for Tableau and Power BI

Snowflake has released a new feature called "Programmatic access tokens."

https://docs.snowflake.com/en/release-notes/2025/other/2025-04-30-programmatic-access-tokens

The great things about this feature are the following two points:

They can be issued even for users with TYPE=SERVICE.
By entering the access token value in the password field, authentication can be done from existing BI tools and other applications.

I've also tried this out and summarized it in the blog post below. I hope you find it helpful.

https://dev.classmethod.jp/articles/snowflake-programmatic-access-tokens/

Blog Post Explaining Snowflake Egress Cost Optimizer (ECO)

An official Snowflake blog post explains the Snowflake Egress Cost Optimizer (ECO), a feature that allows you to "pay egress costs only once when replicating the same data across multiple clouds/regions."

https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/new-regions-egress-cost-optimizer/

This feature was released on April 15, 2025, and is now generally available (GA).

https://docs.snowflake.com/en/release-notes/2025/other/2025-04-15-eco-ga

Business Intelligence

Tableau

2025.2 Coming Soon

The "Coming Soon" page has been updated with details about the Tableau 2025.2 release.

Personally, I'm particularly interested in the enhancements to Show Me and the Tableau app for Google Workspace.

https://www.tableau.com/products/coming-soon

Data Catalog

OpenMetadata

OpenMetadata Receives Grant from Bloomberg's FOSS Contributor Fund

The official OpenMetadata blog announced that OpenMetadata has been awarded a grant from Bloomberg's FOSS Contributor Fund.

I hadn't heard of the "Bloomberg FOSS Contributor Fund" before, but it seems to be a fund launched in 2023 by Bloomberg's Open Source Program Office (OSPO) and Corporate Philanthropy department, awarding grants of $10,000 each to up to three projects quarterly.

Past recipients include OSS projects like PostgreSQL, Apache Airflow, Homebrew, curl, pandas, Apache Arrow, Trino, and Apache Iceberg.

https://blog.open-metadata.org/bloomberg-foss-fund-honors-openmetadata-with-open-source-grant-a35a2799565c

Data Orchestration

Prefect

Prefect Announces Prefect Serverless and Adds Starter and Team Pricing Tiers

Prefect has announced "Prefect Serverless" as a new execution environment. All Prefect Cloud accounts include Serverless execution credits, which are consumed only during actual execution time.

https://www.prefect.io/blog/introducing-prefect-serverless

Concurrently, they have added new Starter and Team pricing plans. With plans starting from $100 USD per month, I feel the pricing structure has become more accessible.

https://www.prefect.io/blog/introducing-two-new-self-serve-plans-for-prefect-cloud

https://www.prefect.io/pricing