Connecting to your data

AI for Data Analysts

Andy Cotgreave

Author and Speaker, Former Technical Evangelist at Tableau

The flat file approach... and its limits

 

• File uploaded into the AI's context window
• Every platform has size limits — free tiers are lowest
• Not scalable, not reproducible — a starting point, not a workflow

 

Integrations: connecting to your real data

• MCP (Model Context Protocol) — the emerging standard, broadly adopted
  • Snowflake MCP can view tables, explore schemas, and run queries from the chat

The context problem

• AI guesses from field names and sample rows

→ Guessing isn't good enough for serious analysis

Data dictionaries and semantic layers

 

• Data dictionary: data structure and definitions

Data dictionaries and semantic layers

 

• Data dictionary: data structure and definitions
• Semantic layer: business definitions
• Together: close the gap between inference and understanding

Giving AI context: the production approach

 

Let's practice!

AI for Data Analysts