Testing is a critical activity in all software projects, but one that is often neglected in data pipelines. The complexities introduced by the inherent statefulness of the problem domain and the interdependencies between systems contribute to make pipeline testing difficult to manage. To make this endeavor more manageable Abe Gong and James Campbell have created Great Expectations. In this episode they discuss how you can use the project to create tests in the exploratory phase of building a pipeline and leverage those to monitor your systems in production. They also discussed how Great Expectations works, the difficulties associated with pipeline testing and managing associated technical debt, and their future plans for the project.

The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA