Gain Visibility Into Your Entire Machine Learning System Using Data Logging With WhyLogs

Summary

There are very few tools which are equally useful for data engineers, data scientists, and machine learning engineers. WhyLogs is a powerful library for flexibly instrumenting all of your data systems to understand the entire lifecycle of your data from source to productionized model. In this episode Andy Dang explains why the project was created, how you can apply it to your existing data systems, and how it functions to provide detailed context for being able to gain insight into all of your data processes.

Announcements

• Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management
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• Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Andy Dang about powering observability of AI systems with the whylogs data logging library

Interview

• Introduction
• How did you get involved in the area of data management?
• Can you describe what Whylabs is and the story behind it?
• How is "data logging" differentiated from logging for the purpose of debugging and observability of software logic?
• What are the use cases that you are aiming to support with Whylogs?
  • How does it compare to libraries and services like Great Expectations/Monte Carlo/Soda Data/Datafold etc.
• Can you describe how Whylogs is implemented?
  • How have the design and goals of the project changed or evolved since you started working on it?
• How do you maintain feature parity between the Python and Java integrations?
• How do you structure the log events and metadata to provide detail and context for data applications?
  • How does that structure support aggregation and interpretation/analysis of the log information?
• What is the process for integrating Whylogs into an existing project?
  • Once you have the code instrumented with log events, what is the workflow for using Whylogs to debug and maintain a data application?
• What have you found to be useful heuristics for identifying what to log?
• What are some of the strategies that teams can use to maintain a balance of signal vs. noise in the events that they are logging?
• How is the Whylogs governance set up and how are you approaching sustainability of the open source project?
• What are the additional utilities and services that you anticipate layering on top of/integrating with Whylogs?
• What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Whylogs used?
• What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Whylabs?
• When is Whylogs/Whylabs the wrong choice?
• What do you have planned for the future of Whylabs?

Contact Info

• LinkedIn
• @andy_dng on Twitter

Parting Question

• From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?

Closing Announcements

• Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other show, Podcast.__init__ to learn about the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used.
• Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes.
• If you’ve learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email [email protected]) with your story.
• To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers

Links

• Whylogs
• Whylabs
• Spark
• Airflow
• Pandas
  • Podcast Episode
• Data Sketches
• Grafana
• Great Expectations
  • Podcast Episode
• Monte Carlo
  • Podcast Episode
• Soda Data
  • Podcast Episode
• Datafold
  • Podcast Episode
• Delta Lake
  • Podcast Episode
• HyperLogLog
• MLFlow
• Flyte

The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA