Understanding Mixpanel's Data Query Process for Reports
When mixpanel queries data for a report, does it query that data from a database? Or does mixpanel capture data whenever an event is triggered, and then queries from that data?
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Mixpanel captures data when events are triggered and then queries from that collected data when generating reports. The platform uses its own purpose-built database and query engine specifically designed for efficient event data analysis.When events occur in your application, Mixpanel collects this data through various methods: 1. Client-side tracking using Mixpanel SDKs 2. Server-side tracking 3. Data warehouse imports through Warehouse Connectors 4. Event streaming/cloud ingestion from existing event pipelinesOnce collected, this data is stored in Mixpanel's specialized database. When you run a report, Mixpanel queries this stored event data rather than querying your original data sources directly.Mixpanel's query engine is specifically optimized for analyzing event data quickly. As noted in their documentation, "Mixpanel has a custom query engine designed to efficiently query event data to produce funnels and other analyses quickly. That fastness is really important for exploratory analysis where waiting a minute or more for each answer causes you to lose your train of thought." Mixpanel BlogTo improve performance, Mixpanel also implements: 1. Query result caching - Storing results from report queries in server cache for faster access when running the same query multiple times Mixpanel Docs2. Query-time sampling (for enterprise customers) - Allowing you to query a subset of users to speed up report loading times Mixpanel DocsThis architecture enables Mixpanel to provide real-time, unsampled analysis that's significantly faster than what you'd typically get when querying a data warehouse directly with SQL.
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You can't directly access or see Mixpanel's purpose-built database called "Arb," as it's proprietary technology that powers Mixpanel's analytics platform behind the scenes. However, Mixpanel has shared some information about its architecture and design in their documentation.Arb is Mixpanel's custom-built analytics database that has been developed over the past decade specifically for handling event data at scale. According to Mixpanel's blog: "We continually invest in the performance of Arb—the event stream database we've developed for the past 10 years. Arb has seen many iterations, beginning from a simple fan-out/fan-in system that let us spread core query logic out to thousands of C binaries running in parallel across hundreds of servers. Over time, we moved it from the cloud to bare metal, made it column-oriented, moved it back to the cloud, separated compute and storage, and completed hundreds of other projects to improve its scalability and performance."Some key characteristics of Arb include: - It's optimized for interactive user joins - It uses a columnar storage format - It's designed for querying event data efficiently at scale - It enables real-time, unsampled analysisWhile you can't see the database directly, you can experience its capabilities through Mixpanel's interface when running reports and analyses. The performance improvements in Arb have allowed Mixpanel to offer more generous data limits and lower prices over time.If you're interested in learning more about how Mixpanel's infrastructure works, they have documentation about it that you can reference under "How it works" in their documentation.Would you like to know more about how Mixpanel processes or stores your data, or are you interested in alternatives for accessing your raw event data?
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