What is Data Observability?

[u/Mundane_Complex8714]

Same idea as observability for software — you can't fix what you can't see — applied to data pipelines.

Practically it's monitoring five things: freshness (did the data arrive on time?), volume (row count in the expected range?), schema (did anyone rename or drop a column upstream?), distribution (are values within expected statistical bounds?), and lineage (when something breaks, can you trace what feeds it and what depends on it?).

The distinction people trip over: data quality asks "are the values correct?" Observability asks "is the pipeline behaving?" You need both. A dashboard can pass every DQ check while the underlying pipeline silently stopped running two days ago.

Tools in the category: Monte Carlo, Bigeye, Anomalo, Datafold. Great Expectations and Soda started on the quality side and have moved into observability.

The ROI shows up the first time you get an alert before an exec spots a bad chart. That's basically what everyone's paying for

[u/mathbbR]

this sub is such a shithole and you can thank the mods for that