Databases
Columnar vs Row Databases: Architecture, Performance, and Use Cases
In-depth comparison of columnar and row-oriented databases covering storage architecture, compression, query performance, and choosing the right one for your workload.
Analytics
Data & Analytics
Trino in Production: The Distributed SQL Engine Powering Data Lakehouses at Netflix, Lyft, and Meta Scale
A deep dive into Trino's architecture, production deployment patterns, performance tuning, and when to choose it over Spark and cloud warehouses for interactive analytics on your data lakehouse.
Data & Analytics
Apache Polars in Production: The Rust-Built DataFrame Library Replacing Pandas for Real Data Engineering Work
A principal cloud architect's guide to Apache Polars: why this Rust-based DataFrame library is replacing pandas in production pipelines, how lazy evaluation and Apache Arrow make it dramatically faster, and where it fits in the modern data stack alongside DuckDB and Apache Iceberg.
Databases
ClickHouse for Real-Time Analytics: Architecture, Use Cases, and When to Use It
ClickHouse is a columnar database built for real-time analytics at absurd scale. Here's how it works, why it's faster than the alternatives, and where it fits in your data stack.
Data & Analytics
Apache Iceberg and the Data Lakehouse: The Architecture That's Eating the Data World
Apache Iceberg is transforming how we think about analytical data storage. Here's how the open table format works, why it's replacing traditional data lakes, and when to adopt a lakehouse architecture.
Data & Analytics
What is a Data Lake? Architecture, Use Cases, and Common Pitfalls
What a data lake actually is, how to architect one that doesn't become a data swamp, real-world use cases, and the pitfalls I've seen sink data lake projects.