Field notes from the data stack
Practical write-ups in three lanes — Superset features, stack comparisons, and production operations.
July 2026
June 2026
Superset featuresFilter presets in Apache Superset
the feature removed in 4.0 — and how we rebuilt it
Superset deleted its experimental Filter Sets in 4.0. The need didn't go anywhere. The history of the removal, why every workaround falls short, and how our fork rebuilt presets with drift detection, sync, and per-user defaults.
11 min readRead article
Superset features6 problems with iframe-embedded Superset
documented in GitHub issues, unfixable by configuration
Theme flashes, SSO session eviction, dead third-party cookies, trapped filter state, 15-second loads, and exposed admin links — the six structural pain points of the official Superset embedding SDK, with receipts.
12 min readRead article
Superset featuresHow Superset Embedded SDK actually works
guest tokens, RLS, and the config nobody documents in one place
A walkthrough of the official @superset-ui/embedded-sdk: the iframe lifecycle, the guest token flow, row-level security, and every config switch you need to flip.
10 min readRead article
Superset featuresSuperset Tags vs Folders
what actually works for large deployments
Why Apache Superset's flat dashboard list breaks at fifty assets, why the native TAGGING_SYSTEM introduces database and UX failures, and how curated folder hierarchies scale to hundreds of dashboards.
14 min readRead article
April 2026
ComparisonApache Superset vs Metabase
an engineering-first comparison of the two open-source BI platforms engineers actually ship
Stack and runtime model, SQL-first vs visual-first, where the governance paywall lands, and what embedded licensing really costs — a side-by-side for engineers picking an open-source BI stack, not a marketing funnel.
14 min readRead article
ComparisonApache Superset vs Microsoft Power BI
an engineering-first comparison for teams picking a BI stack inside — or outside — the Microsoft orbit
Where queries run, how Fabric capacity pricing actually behaves, what Entra ID lock-in means in practice, and how embedded licensing diverges — a side-by-side for engineers picking a BI stack, not a marketing funnel.
15 min readRead article
ComparisonApache Superset vs Tableau
an engineering-first comparison for teams that have to live with the choice
Where queries run, how the semantic layer behaves, what governance actually costs, and how embedded licensing differs — a side-by-side for engineers picking a BI stack, not a marketing funnel.
14 min readRead article
Production & operationsGitOps for Apache Superset
certifying datasets via GitHub Actions
How we treat Superset datasets as code: a GitHub-as-authority workflow with schema validation, Jinja parsing, SQLFluff, and a certification badge that points back to the exact CI run.
9 min readRead article