In this talk, I’ll tell you about how eBay broke through the difficulty of supporting data analysts working on one of the world’s largest data warehouses. Built on the concept of auto-suggest, eBay enhanced the query writing experience with a just-in-time workflow that gives data analysts what they need to know to find, understand and use data in eBay. We backup the experience with a modern data catalog and software that learns from and leverages activities by data stewards, subject experts, and analysts themselves to enrich the knowledge base that feeds the smart suggestion experience. Smart suggestions during the query writing experience help eBay Analysts to gather data faster for decision making without getting in the way of the creative flow. Come see a demonstration of the smart suggestions workflow in practice, learn how we built and deliver the benefits of the catalog behind it and how we plan to use in other ways in the future.
I think a lot about how employees find, understand and use data in their jobs at eBay. My team is called Data Services and Solutions and that’s exactly what we do – create insights, services, tools, and applications that are easy to use and understand; populate them with trusted data and then get out of the way – so employees can get their jobs done with the data they need to make the right decisions for eBay. Oh yes, and I’m a librarian.
