Series

Building Data Platforms

Warehouses, pipelines and the contracts that keep them trustworthy, from Redshift and dbt to Snowflake streaming.

4 parts · 17 min total reading
  1. 1
    Data EngineeringRedshiftLookerdbt

    Building a Data Platform with Redshift, Looker, and dbt

    In 2018-19, TouchNote needed to move from ad-hoc SQL queries to a proper analytics platform. Here's how we built our data stack with Redshift, Looker, and dbt, and what we'd do differently.

    20 Mar 2019 · 2 min read
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  2. 2
    Data Engineeringdata-contractsdbtCDC

    Data Contracts: Stopping Application Changes from Breaking the Warehouse

    Most broken dashboards I've seen weren't caused by bad SQL. They were caused by a perfectly reasonable application change that nobody told the data team about. Data contracts are how I stop that happening, and they're less bureaucratic than they sound.

    20 May 2025 · 5 min read
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  3. 3
    Data EngineeringSnowflakeSnowpipe StreamingKafka

    Snowpipe Streaming: Getting Data into Snowflake in Seconds, Not Minutes

    Classic Snowpipe loads files from cloud storage and is measured in minutes. Snowpipe Streaming writes rows directly into tables with seconds of latency, and its newer high-performance architecture changes both the throughput ceiling and the pricing model. Here's when it's worth it.

    21 Apr 2026 · 4 min read
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  4. 4
    Data EngineeringSnowflakePostgreSQLRDS

    RDS Postgres to Snowflake: Migration Patterns and Choosing the Right Approach

    Getting data from an RDS Postgres database into Snowflake sounds like a solved problem. It mostly is, but there are at least five patterns to choose from, and the wrong one will cost you in freshness, money or on-call pain. Here's how I think about each.

    4 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
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