What is ADL?
Agnostic Data Labs (ADL) is a tool for data teams who are tired of writing the same boilerplate code over and over again.
If you’ve ever built a data warehouse, a staging area, or a data vault, you know the drill — dozens of tables, hundreds of columns, and a mountain of repetitive SQL that all follows the same patterns. ADL takes a different approach: define your metadata once, pair it with templates, and generate everything you need.
How it works
Section titled “How it works”ADL is built around three simple ideas:
1. Metadata — describe what you have
Section titled “1. Metadata — describe what you have”Your data solution starts with metadata. In ADL, this means defining your data connections (where your data lives), data objects (your tables, views, and queries), and how they relate to each other through mappings.
All metadata is stored as plain JSON files using an open-source schema. There’s no proprietary format and no database to manage — just files in your repository that you can edit in ADL or any text editor.
2. Templates — describe what you want
Section titled “2. Templates — describe what you want”Templates define the output you want to generate. They’re written in Handlebars, a straightforward templating language that’s easy to pick up even if you’ve never used it before.
A template might generate a SQL CREATE TABLE statement, a stored procedure, a Markdown documentation page, or a deployment script. ADL comes with a library of ready-made templates for common patterns, and you can create your own for anything else.
3. Output — generate and deploy
Section titled “3. Output — generate and deploy”When you combine metadata with templates, ADL generates your output files — SQL scripts, documentation, configuration files, or whatever your templates produce. Each template generates one output file per mapped metadata object, so everything stays organized and predictable.
The generated files land in your repository, ready to be reviewed, committed, and deployed through your normal CI/CD pipeline.
Why ADL?
Section titled “Why ADL?”- Save time. Stop hand-writing the same SQL patterns for every table. Define the pattern once as a template and let ADL do the rest.
- Stay consistent. When every script is generated from the same template, you know they all follow the same standards and conventions.
- Stay flexible. Your metadata and templates are plain files in your repo. There’s no vendor lock-in, no proprietary database, and no special tools required to read or edit them.
- Work with any platform. ADL supports SQL Server, Snowflake, PostgreSQL, and more. Your templates can generate output for any target.
- Evolve with confidence. Need to change a pattern across 200 tables? Update the template and regenerate. Done.
What’s next?
Section titled “What’s next?”- Get Started — Set up your first project in a few minutes using a sample data solution.
- How ADL Works — Dive deeper into the metadata, template, and generation workflow.
- Explore the App — Take a tour of the ADL interface and what each screen does.