Debugging complex data pipelines often involves tracking short-lived data like Excel buffers and transformed data frames.
The post suggests turning transient data into inspectable artifacts with almost zero friction to enhance the developer experience.
The solution outlined involves treating in-memory data as a file, uploading it to a WebDAV server, and inspecting it with Filestash.
WebDAV, a widely supported HTTP-based standard, is chosen for its simplicity and various server implementations like Jackrabbit and Apache Server.
Filestash, a web UI for storage backends like WebDAV or S3, is preferred for its clean interface and integration with Collabora Online for previewing office files.
The implementation involves setting up a WebDAV server, writing code for the client, and configuring Filestash using Docker Compose.
Benefits include simplified debugging, improved transparency, and easy integration with existing logging infrastructure.
Challenges discussed include file name conflicts, data retention policies, and considerations for sending data to the server.
Conclusion highlights WebDAV + Filestash as an elegant debugging solution for data-heavy applications, with room for enhancements like data retention mechanisms and improved Docker setup.
The experiment repository for this setup is available at https://github.com/djalilhebal/debugging-data-pipelines-demo.