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Core Concepts

Welcome to OWOX Data Marts – a structured, controlled, and reliable way to control, organize, and share business-ready data from data teams to business users. The OWOX team, with over 20 years of experience developing data products, stays on 3 core beliefs:

  • Control over reporting for data analysts
  • Freedom for business users to timely access data
  • Trusted data for across reports & dashboards

This guide will help you better understand our beliefs, values & save time during implementation.

Core Concepts

OWOX Data Marts has a lot of terms inside, but here are the basic ones:

  • Data Mart is a set of meaningful data controlled by data analyst and used by business users for reporting (directly or indirectly).
  • Source is a platform like Meta Ads or TikTok Ads, Reddit Ads, from which raw data is collected via connectors.
  • Storage is a data warehouse (e.g., Google BigQuery, AWS Athena) where all data is stored & processed.
  • Destination is a BI tool where business users access data (e.g., Google Sheets, Looker Studio).
  • Report is a specific spreadsheet tab where data is exported to.
  • Trigger rules for automated data delivery on a schedule.
  • Run is a single manual or an automated data load action.

Data Marts

An OWOX Data Mart is the foundational entity in OWOX Data Marts. It’s a controlled, ready-to-share artifact designed for analytics and reporting.

It’s crafted by data analysts and can be defined using:

and handed off to business users so they can run, filter, and schedule reports – without breaking YOUR logic and asking for help, pinging in Slack, or creating another JIRA ticket.

Unlike raw data inside your data warehouse, each Data Mart is:

  • Documented with a description, business outcome, and output schema with friendly metric names
  • Reusable across BI tools: Google Sheets, Looker Studio, Excel, and more
  • Trustworthy - no more asking “Whose report is right?”
  • Modeled (optional) by setting up relationships with other data marts

☝️ Think of it as a source of truth for a specific business question, like:

  • How did our customer acquisition cost change over time?
  • What’s our ROAS by campaign and channel?
  • Which features drive subscription renewals?

Connector-defined Data Marts import data from external Sources (e.g., Facebook Ads, Google Sheets) into a Storage. All other types of Data Marts query data directly from the Storage.

☝️ Data Marts empower Data Analysts to control and hand off business-ready data.

Source is a service that holds data you want to manipulate—for example, Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Google Sheets, etc. You can find the available connectors here.

☝️ By managing a Data Mart’s Sources, a Data Analyst controls the origin of the data.

Storages

Storage is your project’s data warehouse (DWH) — a SQL-compatible system where all your data lives, such as:

Each project must have at least one Storage, which stores and processes all your data. You can configure multiple Storages, but each Data Mart must be linked to exactly one.

☝️ By specifying a Data Mart’s Storage, a Data Analyst ensures data ownership and controls where the data is stored and processed.

Destinations

A Destination is an interface or application used by business users to access the data. Supported destinations include:

Each Data Mart can be linked to multiple Destinations.

  • All destinations except Google Sheets operate in pull mode — they query Storage when a user or tool requests the data.
  • Google Sheets uses push mode — data is exported from the Data Mart into a Report in Google Sheets via manual or scheduled runs.

☝️ Destinations allow Data Analysts to control and monitor which services business users consume data in.

A Report defines a specific sheet within a Google Sheets document where the Data Mart’s data is exported. Different Google Sheets Reports of the same Data Mart may have different scheduled triggers.

Triggers automate data movement on a schedule. There are 2 types of triggers in OWOX Data Marts:

☝️ Triggers allow Data Analysts to control data freshness and save time.

  • Connector Run – import data from a Source into Storage.
  • Report Runs – push or pull data (stored in Storage) to a Destination.