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Log, Monitor, and Debug Data Pipelines with Python

In modern data engineering, visibility, and reliability are crucial. This hands-on Code Lab teaches you to implement structured logging, debug failures, and enhance observability in production pipelines. You'll use Python’s logging module and loguru to analyze logs, detect issues, and apply retry mechanisms for reliability. By improving tracing, error handling, and alerting, you'll build robust, production-ready workflows. Join now to boost your data pipeline troubleshooting skills!

Lab platform
Lab Info
Level
Intermediate
Last updated
Sep 18, 2025
Duration
52m

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Table of Contents
  1. Challenge

    Structured Logging in Python

    Overview

    Effective logging is a cornerstone of building maintainable and reliable ETL pipelines. Structured logging enhances the readability, searchability, and utility of logs, making them valuable tools for debugging and monitoring.

    In this step, you'll configure Python's logging module to generate structured logs, enhance it using the loguru library, and explore the use of log levels (DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR) to categorize log messages effectively.

    Since you will frequently work with the Python's logging tool, you will import logging, which is part of the standard library. Logging levels helps you categorize messages based on severity, ensuring that you capture useful information without unnecessary noise. ### Solution The solution can be found in the solution directory.

  2. Challenge

    Debug Failures in Data Pipelines

    Overview

    In this step, you'll learn how to debug failures in data pipelines using structured logs. You'll configure logging to detect and diagnose errors, implement retry mechanisms with exponential backoff for transient failures, and log detailed error messages with stack traces. Below the configure_logging function, you will now define a new function called process_data.

    This function simulates a basic data processing workflow and demonstrates how logging is used to track both successful and failed operations. Below the retry_process_data function definition, you will need to simulate an Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) data processing pipeline by iterating through different types of data inputs.

    This will allow you to observe how the function handles both valid and invalid data entries. ### Solution The solution can be found in the solution directory.

  3. Challenge

    Monitoring and Observability

    Overview

    In this step, you'll learn how to carry out monitoring and observability in data pipelines. You'll configure tracing to track data lineage and dependencies, implement structured error handling and logging to capture exceptions, and set up basic alerting mechanisms to catch failures before they impact production. These techniques will help ensure your data workflows are reliable, transparent, and easier to debug. ### Solution The solution can be found in the solution directory. ### Conclusion Congratulations! You’ve implemented key observability features that help catch issues before they impact production. With tracing, structured error handling, and alerting in place, your ETL pipeline is now more resilient, transparent, and maintainable. These are essential practices for operating data workflows at scale in real-world environments. You’re now better equipped to build robust data pipelines that teams can trust.

About the author

Dr. Yasir Khan is a global tech consultant and 38Labs founder. He's passionate about digital transformation, data & AI, and regularly shares technology insights on Pluralsight.

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