computer science

Trifacta

Trifacta is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Trifacta rather than just read about it. In short: Trifacta is a privately owned software company headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Bangalore, Boston, Berlin and London. The company was founded in October 2012 and primarily develops data wrangling software for data exploration and self-service data preparation on cloud and on-premises data platforms.

Key takeaways

Trifacta belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Trifacta to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Trifacta from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Trifacta is a privately owned software company headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Bangalore, Boston, Berlin and London. The company was founded in October 2012 and primarily develops data wrangling software for data exploration and self-service data preparation on cloud and on-premises data platforms. Its platform, also named Trifacta, is "designed for analysts to explore, transform, and enrich raw data into clean and structured formats." Trifacta utilizes techniques in machine learning, data visualization, human-computer interaction, and parallel processing so non-technical users can work with large datasets.

History The company was developed from a joint research project with Ph.D. and UC Berkeley Professor Joe Hellerstein, Ph.D. and University of Washington and former Stanford professor Jeffrey Heer, and Stanford Ph.D. Sean Kandel. The company created a software application that combines visual interaction with intelligent inference for the process of data transformation and was launched in October 2012; to date, Trifacta has raised over $76 million in funding from Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners and Cathay Innovation. The company also has investments from X/Seed Capital, Data Collective and angel investors Dave Goldberg, Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman.

Milestones Sep 2001: Potter's Wheel: An Interactive Data Cleaning System Feb 2011: Launch of Data Wrangler Alpha April 2012: Trifacta founded by Joe Hellerstein, Jeffrey Heer, and Sean Kandel October 2012: Series A Funding $4.3M from Accel, Led by Ping Li, head of the firm's Big Data Fund April 2013: Alpha release of Trifacta Data Transformation December 2013: Series B funding $12M led by Greylock and Joseph Ansanelli of Greylock joined the board February 2014: Data Transformation Platform 1.0 Introduced March 2014: Strategic partnership formed with Cloudera April 2014: Trifacta named "One of the 10 Hot Hadoop Start Ups to Watch", Opens San Francisco Office May 2014: Series C Funding $25M led by Ignition and Ignition's Frank Artale joined the board July 2014: Adam Wilson Joins Trifacta as CEO October 2015: Trifacta Wrangler launches December 2015: Expands to Europe, Opens London Office February 2016: Trifacta raised $35M from existing investors Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners and new investor Cathay Innovation, bringing the total amount raised to over $76 million. November 2016: Recognized by IDC Innovator for Self-Service Data Preparation March 2016: Trifacta Introduces Photon Compute Framework March 2017: Collaborates with Google to create Google Cloud Dataprep, January 2018: Series D Funding $48M from Columbia Pacific, Deutsche Börse, Ericsson, Google, and New York Life February 2022: Alteryx announced it completed its acquisition of Trifacta for $400 million in an all-cash deal.

Products & partnerships Trifacta has three products available via its platform:Trifacta Wrangler, Wrangler Pro, and Trifacta Wrangler Enterprise. Trifacta Wrangler is a connected desktop application to transform data for downstream analytics and visualization. Wrangler Pro supports larger data volumes, cloud and on-premises deployment options, and the ability to schedule and operationalize data preparation workflows. Wrangler Enterprises is an enterprise-level offering for teams in organizations and offers centralized management of security, governance and operationalization. Trifacta Wrangler Enterprise features include expanded self-service scheduling and flow view, increased sampling flexibility, and context-aware wrangling tasks. Wrangler Pro is designed for analyst teams wrangling diverse data outside of big data environments. In March 2017, Google announced the launch of Cloud Dataprep, a service for users to clean up their data sets before pushing it into a service like Google's BigQuery managed data warehousing service. The software is an embedded version of Trifacta's Wrangler Enterprise app. In November 2017, Trifacta announced expanded support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and made available Wrangler Edge and Wrangler Enterprise on the AWS Marketplace. Trifacta was additionally awarded the AWS Machine Learning (ML) Competency status for previous success in machine learning deployment on AWS. In March 2018, Trifacta and Microsoft announced their co-sell partner status and the introduction of Trifacta's Wrangler Enterprise product on the Azure Marketplace.

References

External links Official website Official Twitter Account

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Trifacta

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Trifacta claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Trifacta before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Trifacta ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Trifacta

In research: Trifacta appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Trifacta in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Trifacta is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2012 establishments in California, 2022 mergers and acquisitions, Companies based in San Francisco, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Trifacta outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Trifacta in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Trifacta means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Trifacta out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Trifacta in simple terms?

Why does Trifacta matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Trifacta?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Trifacta.