​dstack.ai is an open-source tool and an enterprise platform for building data and ML applications using Python and R.

How is dstack different from other frameworks (Plotly, Streamlit, Shiny, etc):

• It simplifies the process of creating applications by

  • a) decoupling ML development and application development (by introducing an ML Registry)

  • b) leveraging a declarative approach to defining application components (ML models, datasets, reports, jobs, etc)

• It is designed for data scientists and doesn't require development skills to build applications.

How dstack works

The framework consists of the following parts:

• Client packages for Python (dstack-py) an R (dstack-r). These packages can be used from either notebooks or scripts to push data to dstack.

• A server application (dstack-server). It handles the requests from the Client packages, and serve data applications. The application can run locally or in Docker.

A data science application is a specific kind of application that solves domain-specific problems using data and data science methods. These data science methods may include data-wrangling, data visualizations, statistical modeling, machine learning, etc.

Building data science applications

There are several general use-cases for such data science applications:

1. Reports – interactive visualizations with different layouts

2. Model registry - Once, you've trained an ML model, you can push it to dstack.ai using the Python's push function. Later, you can pull this model to use anywhere: in a notebook, script, job, or application.

3. Jobs – Automate the routine of processing datasets or updating dashboards, by running regular Python or R jobs and monitoring their progress.

4. Applications – Interactive applications that run on the server and let users to interact with ML models and data sources (not supported yet)

Currently, dstack supports Reports, Model registry, and Jobs. The support for Applications is coming soon.

Currently, dstack supports only Interactive reports. The support for Live Reports and Machine learning applications is coming very soon.

Automating scientific routines

The dstack in-cloud and on-premises versions allow you to execute Python and R jobs right – either on demand or automatically at a regular schedule.

The jobs are ideal for processing data regularly and publishing the results, e.g. in the form of data visualizations, datasets, or other artifacts.