Deciphering Data Architectures: Choosing Between a Modern Data Warehouse, Data Fabric, Data Lakehouse, and Data Mesh

Data fabric, data lakehouse, and data mesh have recently appeared as viable alternatives to the modern data warehouse. These new architectures have solid benefits, but they’re also surrounded by a lot of hyperbole and confusion. This practical book provides a guided tour of each architecture to help data professionals understand its pros and cons.

In the process, James Serra, big data and data warehousing solution architect at Microsoft, examines common data architecture concepts, including how data warehouses have had to evolve to work with data lake features. You’ll learn what data lakehouses can help you achieve, and how to distinguish data mesh hype from reality. Best of all, you’ll be able to determine the most appropriate data architecture for your needs. By reading this book, you’ll:

• Gain a working understanding of several data architectures
• Know the pros and cons of each approach
• Distinguish data architecture theory from the reality
• Learn to pick the best architecture for your use case
• Understand the differences between data warehouses and data lakes
• Learn common data architecture concepts to help you build better solutions
• Alleviate confusion by clearly defining each data architecture
• Know what architectures to use for each cloud provider