What are data apps? Types, uses, and how they work

This post defines data apps as interactive applications combining live data with business logic for exploration and analysis, contrasting them with traditional dashboards. It details their working principles: direct connection to cloud data platforms, query caching for performance, inheritance of warehouse security and governance, and a split computation model between warehouse and application layers. It categorizes data apps into self-service analytics, collaborative exploration tools, and predictive applications, and provides use cases across Finance, Sales, Operations, Marketing, and Healthcare. The post concludes by positioning Hex as a unified analytics platform for building such applications.