Data freshness refers to how current your data is relative to the real-world events it's meant to represent. In data observability, it's one of the most critical metrics because even accurate data can lead to poor decisions if it's outdated. Whether you're monitoring financial trades or patient records, stale data can have serious business consequences.

SQL Table Tracer (STT) is a lightweight library that extracts table-level lineage from SQL queries. It plays a key role in data observability by identifying upstream and downstream tables, making it easier to understand data dependencies and track changes across your data pipelines.

SLIs are a fantastic way to measure the health and performance of your data products. By tracking metrics like data freshness, anomaly detection, and real-time alerts, you can ensure your data meets expectations and stays aligned with your team’s SLA compliance goals.

Absolutely! SQL Table Tracer is designed with a minimal API and modular architecture, making it easy to plug into larger observability platforms. It provides the foundational data needed for building features like data lineage tracking, pipeline health dashboards, and SLA monitoring.

Sifflet’s observability platform is designed to provide real-time metrics and proactive monitoring through advanced data quality checks, anomaly detection, and custom health scores. This helps data teams catch issues before they escalate, ensuring your data products stay healthy and consistent.

End-to-end data lineage helps your team perform accurate impact assessments and faster root cause analysis. By connecting declared and built-in assets, you get full visibility into upstream and downstream dependencies, which is key for data reliability and operational intelligence.

There are four main types: technical lineage, business lineage, cross-system lineage, and governance lineage. Each serves a different purpose, from debugging pipelines to supporting compliance. Tools like Sifflet offer field-level lineage for deeper insights, helping teams across engineering, analytics, and compliance understand and trust their data.

Data lineage adds context to data observability by linking alerts to their root cause. For example, if a metric suddenly drops, lineage helps trace it back to a delayed ingestion or schema change. This speeds up incident resolution and strengthens anomaly detection. Platforms like Sifflet combine lineage with real-time metrics and data freshness checks to provide a complete view of pipeline health.