# MetaBase - A Powerful Power BI Alternative

> An open-source BI tool for easy data analysis, visualization, and sharing, supporting multiple databases.

By Zsolt Bizderi · Published 2024-08-03
Canonical: https://ambientnode.uk/metabase

[Metabase](https://www.metabase.com/) is an open-source business intelligence tool designed to help companies and organizations analyse, visualize, and share their data.



![](/media/fa5b99af-8448-4b2a-86e5-fb97b35ea2f5/1280.webp)



### **Key Features**

* **Ease of Use**: User-friendly interface, which allows users without extensive technical knowledge to create and view data reports and dashboards.
* **Querying Data**: Users can run queries on their databases using a simple point-and-click interface, or by writing custom SQL queries for more complex needs.
* **Data Visualization**: Metabase provides a variety of visualization options, including bar charts, line charts, scatter plots, pie charts, and more.
* **Dashboard Sharing**: Dashboards and individual reports can be easily shared with team members or embedded into other applications, promoting collaboration and data-driven decision-making.
* **Support for Multiple Databases**: Metabase supports a wide range of databases, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, SQLite, and many more, making it versatile for different data environments.
* **Customizable Filters**: Users can add customizable filters to dashboards, allowing viewers to interact with the data and drill down into specific details.
* **Alerts and Notifications**: Users can set up alerts and notifications to receive updates when certain conditions are met in the data, helping to stay informed about key metrics and changes.
* **Questions and Answers**: Metabase allows users to ask questions about their data without needing to write SQL. It translates these questions into queries and displays the results in an easy-to-understand format.
* **Ad Hoc Analysis**: Users can perform ad hoc analysis on the fly, enabling quick insights without needing to set up complex reports in advance.

### Licensing

* Metabase allows you to self-host the platform without any additional fees. There are no user/DB/query limits on the self-hosted version of Metabase.
* The paid version has its benefits in that Metabase will manage the infrastructure (setup/failover) for you and there are a lot of additional modules available [on the paid plan](https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/paid-features/overview) (eg.: directory authentication).

### Requirements

* VM with Docker and Docker Compose installed. This example uses Docker to deploy Metabase. Check out [this post to quickly deploy a new VM](/proxmox-vm-deployment-automation/) and install Docker and Compose using Ansible in under a few minutes.
  + Metabase requires at least 1 CPU core and 2GB ram for the server. For every 40 concurrent users, a PostgreSQL DB needs 1 CPU core and 1GB RAM.

### Deployment

Metabase can be deployed as a standalone Docker container, to which you can connect your DBs after setting up the basics.

This example uses Docker Compose to deploy Metabase as well as a PostgreSQL database (optional). First, create a new shared network to house all BI apps.

```
 docker network create -d bridge shared_network
```

Create a new Docker Network for all BI-related applications.

```
version: "3.9"
services:
  metabase:
    image: metabase/metabase:latest
    container_name: metabase
    hostname: metabase
    networks:
      - shared_network 
    volumes:
      - metabase_app_data:/metabase
    ports:
      - 3000:3000

  postgres:
    image: postgres:latest
    container_name: postgres
    hostname: postgres
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: metabase
      POSTGRES_DB: metabaseappdb
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: mysecretpassword
    volumes:
      - metabase_postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data

volumes:
  metabase_postgres:
  metabase_app_data:

networks:
  shared_network:
    external: true
```

compose.yml

### Initial Setup

* Visit http://{Host\_IP}}:3000 and select your language.
* Create an admin account.
* Attach the database. The connectivity details are preconfigured in the Docker Compose file above (optional, you can connect DBs after the initial setup is complete).

### **Data Management**

Metabase offers two main sources of Data:

* Database
* CSV files (enabled under A**dmin settings** > **Settings** > **Uploads**)

Uploading CSV data is best suited for ad hoc analysis of spreadsheet data. If you have a lot of data, or will need to update or add to that data regularly, it is recommended setting up a way to load that data into a database directly, then connecting Metabase to that database.

### **Migrating to a Production DB:**

Metabase [covers how to migrate](https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/installation-and-operation/migrating-from-h2) your Metabase instance with Docker to a production ready database when you are ready to go live.

### **Data Visualisation**

Metabase is equipped with a lot of opptions for visualisations, from various graphs and grid-type dashboard for flexibility.



![](/media/c0b208b9-6c7f-4663-83ae-aef265597d44/327.webp)



This example will use [this sample CSV](https://gist.github.com/kevin336/acbb2271e66c10a5b73aacf82ca82784) to load and visualise the following example data:




![](/media/735fc49a-bd8a-4d88-909d-a4fa2166a827/508.webp)



* Download the CSV and navigate to Collections > Your Personal Collection > Upload.
* Upload the CSV and create a new model.
* Click on the Employees model. Metabase automatically detects headers and arranges data in a table.
* Let's visualize the total distribution of employee roles by salary in a pie chart:
  + Click New > Question and select the following:
    - Data: Employees
    - Summarize: Sum of Salary
    - By: Job ID
  + Click Visualise.
  + Click Visualisation and select Pie.
  + Click the gear icon next to the visualization tab, select Measure > ... and change the style to Currency.
  + Click Done, save and add it to a new dashboard.

### **Conclusion**

Metabase is a powerful Power BI and Tableau alternative with a focus on being user-friendly and open source. I highly recommend trying it out if you're looking for BI tools.