Handbook: Building BI Dashboards with Streamlit & AI
A Practical “BI as Code” Development Handbook
Are you encountering any of these issues in daily analytics work?
- Hitting the limits of conventional BI tools
- Difficulty embedding custom logic or AI capabilities
- Reliance on engineers for every change
- High license fees
Our guide, BI as Code in Practice: Building BI Dashboards with AI + Streamlit , outlines an alternative approach that addresses these concerns.
Why Look at “BI as Code” Now?
Traditional BI platforms revolve around GUI-centric workflows. While drag-and-drop is quick, fine-grained customization or rapid AI integration can be difficult.
Full scratch development offers flexibility but is often too demanding for non-engineers.
This handbook shows how combining Streamlit (a Python library) with modern AI tools can bridge that gap.
What the Guide Covers
Content for Both Business Users and Technical Staff
For business professionals
- Generating starter code through natural-language prompts
- A stepwise learning path that begins with ~15 lines of code
- Environment setup via GitHub Codespaces (no local installs)
For engineers and data scientists
- Techniques for enabling self-service analytics in business teams
- Version-control and team-development practices
- Patterns for integrating with existing systems
AI-Supported Development Workflows
- Using tools such as ChatGPT for efficient code generation
- Moving from plain-language requirements to a working dashboard
- Applying AI to troubleshoot and debug
Application-Focused Examples
- Quality-control dashboards for manufacturing
- E-commerce sales-analysis systems
- On-demand analytics with Text-to-SQL
- Operational guidance from a DevOps/DataOps perspective
Comparison with Conventional Approaches
| Perspective | Traditional BI Tools | BI as Code (this guide) |
|---|---|---|
| Customizability | Limited to GUI features | Full Python ecosystem |
| AI Integration | Minimal | Rapid integration of new models |
| Cost | License fees | Open source + cloud costs |
| Team Workflows | Hard to share settings | Git-based version control |
| Learning Curve | Complex GUI operations | AI-assisted, incremental learning |
Quick Start with GitHub Codespaces
The guide includes step-by-step instructions for setting up GitHub Codespaces, letting you experiment in a browser-based environment without local configuration.
Explore the Next Phase of BI Development
AI is rapidly reshaping the analytics landscape, lowering the barrier for non-engineers and expanding what teams can accomplish. This newly published guide provides concrete techniques you can apply immediately.
BI as Code in Practice: Building BI Dashboards with AI + Streamlit