“We had a couple of environments on Supabase and I usually just build everything on there. But with Snaplet it became easier because now we can just use the Supabase CLI locally, and then put on a snapshot of our data into the local database.”
Ben Wunderlich lead software engineer from Trunk, chatted to Peter, our CEO about how Snaplet helped them manage large amounts of data in their development environment and therefore ensuring safe, seamless collaboration with their manufacturing partners. He joined Trunk after working on AI and image recognition for IBM. Trunk is a leading software company that works with offsite manufacturers to optimize their manufacturing lines and achieve better performance.
Their use case
Setup a local environment quickly
Snaplet's ability to create snapshots of data, trim unnecessary information, and synchronize it with local databases offered a convenient alternative to manual SQL queries and data management. By integrating Snaplet with their existing infrastructure, Trunk found it easier to set up and maintain their local environments and populate their local databases. This streamlined workflow improved their development process and eliminated the need for complex data migration procedures. They were happy to be rid of maintaining batch scripts and trying to remember SQL.
Reduce large amounts of data
Apart from managing their SQL queries, they also wanted a solution that would provide a reliable method for data subsetting and data anonymization.
“Our system is an event source system. So it means you have quite a lot of data. And to set that up every time with SQL queries is challenging because you have to keep the queries up to date. But with Snaplet, it was pretty easy. You just set up a snapshot of the data and you can trim down the data that you don't need.”
De-identify sensitive info
Thanks to Snaplet's Typescript transformations, they can obfuscate sensitive information when sharing data with customers, ensuring data privacy and compliance. With the addition of smart filter, they can now pull data for specific partners and debug data-specific issues faster than before.
“We have the demo environment to demo all our software and for that I also use Snaplet, so I just took a snapshot of our production database from one company that we work with and because we can't show all the data to potential customers and we use transformations to hide specific information.”
No more database dumps
Before Snaplet, they used postgres pg_dump, but it was a lot of effort. Then Ben found documentation on how to use Snaplet with Supabase and he immediately started using Snaplet for his local environments: “Just having a snapshot every night is much nicer than me doing the PG dumps every day.” He also found the whole process simple and easy to set up: “We just plugged in the database, took a snapshot, pulled it down to my local system, and it was good to go.”
Onboarding new team members
Snaplet also made onboarding new engineers much easier and faster. A process that usually took a few days are now done in half a day. “We have just one script that you have to run that starts up Supabase; then run, snaplet [which automatically] sets up everything, and then they're good to go.” New team members can start to do their job right away without having to even think about production database access, sensitive data, data dumps or seed scripts. Being able to do everything in Javascript also made it much easier for new engineers who were not well acquainted with SQL.
Snaplet in Ben’s own words
We asked Ben to describe Snaplet in his own words and this is his take on it when he recommend Snaplet to others: “I'll describe it as a platform to get copies of your production data and manipulate it to hide critical information.”
How Snaplet helped
Snaplet simplified the process of handling large amounts of data, made collaboration and sharing easier, accelerated onboarding and ultimately improved Trunk’s development workflow. It is a great pleasure to hear how Snaplet helped Trunk's dev team. This is exactly why we exist: We want to make developer’s lives better by making their work easier. We want to take away all their concerns regarding data management, setting up new environments, and sharing sensitive information. Our aim is to seamlessly integrate into their daily workflows, freeing them from the nuisance of writing code for routine tasks (such as seed scripts) and enabling them to focus on core responsibilities. We want to help them get into the flow of solving problems quicker, debugging faster and shipping sooner with safe production-accurate data. If this sounds like a great solution for your team too, give Snaplet a try!
