8-8: Data Lake Strategy
Calculating the economics of Lakehouse architectures vs pure Data Warehouses.
🎯 What You'll Learn
- ✓ Compare Schema-on-Read vs Schema-on-Write
- ✓ Evaluate Databricks Lakehouse ROI
- ✓ Optimize raw S3 storage
The Economics of Schema-on-Read
Traditional Data Warehouses require you to structure the data perfectly before you load it (Schema-on-Write). This requires heavy upfront engineering investment just to see if the data is useful.
Data Lakes (S3 buckets full of Parquet files) leverage Schema-on-Read. You dump raw data cheaply ($0.02/GB), and only apply expensive parsing logic if an analyst actively queries it. This defers the engineering cost until the exact moment value is requested.
The "Lakehouse" pattern (Databricks) combines cheap S3 storage with Warehouse-level performance, creating the optimal balance of deferred engineering cost and rapid analytical retrieval.
Dumping raw data to S3 without structuring it, saving pipeline creation time until demand exists.
A columnar storage format that makes raw S3 files 10x to 100x cheaper to scan than raw JSON.
Implement a Parquet conversion layer for your raw logs.
Action Items
What is the primary economic advantage of a "Data Lake" architecture over a traditional "Data Warehouse"?
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Defensible Economics
Replace heuristic guesswork with hard mathematical frameworks for build-vs-buy and SLA penalty negotiations.
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Module Syllabus
Lesson 1: The Economics of Schema-on-Read
Traditional Data Warehouses require you to structure the data perfectly before you load it (Schema-on-Write). This requires heavy upfront engineering investment just to see if the data is useful.Data Lakes (S3 buckets full of Parquet files) leverage Schema-on-Read. You dump raw data cheaply ($0.02/GB), and only apply expensive parsing logic if an analyst actively queries it. This defers the engineering cost until the exact moment value is requested.The "Lakehouse" pattern (Databricks) combines cheap S3 storage with Warehouse-level performance, creating the optimal balance of deferred engineering cost and rapid analytical retrieval.
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