Prior to **_re:dash_**, we tried to use traditional BI suites and discovered a set of bloated, technically challenged and slow tools/flows. What we were looking for was a more hacker'ish way to look at data, so we built one.
**_re:dash_** was built to allow fast and easy access to billions of records, that we process and collect using Amazon Redshift ("petabyte scale data warehouse" that "speaks" PostgreSQL).
1.**Query Editor**: think of [JS Fiddle](http://jsfiddle.net) for SQL queries. It's your way to share data in the organization in an open way, by sharing both the dataset and the query that generated it. This way everyone can peer review not only the resulting dataset but also the process that generated it. Also it's possible to fork it and generate new datasets and reach new insights.
2.**Dashboards/Visualizations**: once you have a dataset, you can create different visualizations out of it, and then combine several visualizations into a single dashboard. Currently it supports charts, pivot table and cohorts.
**_re:dash_** is a work in progress and has its rough edges and way to go to fulfill its full potential. The Query Editor part is quite solid, but the visualizations need more work to enrich them and to make them more user friendly.
* [Google Group (mailing list)](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/redash-users): the best place to get updates about new releases or ask general questions.
* Find us [on gitter](https://gitter.im/EverythingMe/redash#) (chat).
* Contact Arik, the maintainer directly: arik@everything.me.
