Data Tools

Node-RED: Exceptional Low-Code Flow-Based Orchestration

Node-RED is automation for tinkerers — equal parts engineering playground and system integrator’s fever dream. It’s not shiny, it’s not hip, but it gets the job done with a swagger that says, “Yeah, I’ve been doing event-driven workflows since before your startup existed.” Node-RED is a low-code flow-based automation and integration tool — essentially a visual workflow orchestration engine for events, APIs, and IoT systems. Before low-code was cool, before every SaaS tool started pretending to be “developer-friendly,” there was Node-RED — a scrappy, open-source flow editor built by IBM engineers who just wanted to wire the Internet of Things together without losing their minds in callback hell. It started as a side project, a visual tool for wiring together … Read more

Stitch: The Elegant Data Ingestion Engine

Stitch usually pops up on developers’ radar when they dream of a less awful way to load data into the warehouse than ad-hoc Python scripts and mounting cron jobs. According to the Stitch pitch, Stitch is a “cloud-first, open-source platform for rapidly moving data” — basically the elegant opposite of your spaghetti-coded data ingestion system. The promise: connect your sources, set up your destination, turn off tabs you’ve kept open for six months, and click play. What Stitch Does Well But Yes, There Are Trade-Offs (and Some Big Warnings) What’s This About Stitch Pricing? Ok bub, you asked for it. Pricing with Stitch is one of those situations where everything looks calm and reasonable… right up until your row counts … Read more