Strata Enters Early Beta as Expressive Semantic Layer That Can Say No to LLMs

Strata includes a semantic layer, dashboards, subscriptions and Google Sheets exports, according to the post. Ajo wrote that all of this can be done through agent conversation or via MCP. He said the main challenge was balancing expressiveness with ease of use for non-technical colleagues, and that this focus made the system work pretty well with LLMs too.

The semantic layer uses strict naming. Only one thing called Revenue can exist in a project, Ajo wrote. If revenue is mapped to multiple tables, the query grain plus speed will decide which table is used. Strict naming conventions also lend themselves to enabling automatic data blending across fact domains, according to the post.

Strata supports partition- and aggregate-aware semantic routing. Ajo wrote that this allows a user to load a portion of data into a faster compute engine such as Druid or ClickHouse while keeping full history in Trino or another cheaper system. The query engine will choose the faster tier if the query can be resolved there, he said.

Out of the box, Strata supports snapshot, LOD include/exclude, compound and auto-leveling compound measures, Ajo wrote. On top of the semantic layer, users can create custom calculations that span fact domains. The post also describes the ability to create cohorts and apply them as a filter to an entire query or to a single measure within a query.

Ajo said Strata is deliberately not building a semantic layer that BI tools connect to. He called that approach a dead end. Instead, the product offers APIs and MCP for anything custom that users want to build on top, according to the post.

Strata is an early beta and is not open source. The free tier includes up to 25 users, and Ajo wrote that users should be able to run it entirely on their own machine with Docker. He linked to a free trial at https://strata.do/try/ and documentation at https://strata.do/docs/.

Ajo asked for feedback, especially from people working with Looker and Cube. The Hacker News post listed 3 points and no comments.