Data Lake Platform

Data Lake Platform

Build and operate production data lakes and lakehouses: ingest, transform, store in open formats, and serve analytics reliably.

When to Use

• Design data lake/​lakehouse architecture
• Set up ingestion pipelines (batch, incremental, CDC)
• Build SQL transformation layers (SQLMesh, dbt)
• Choose table formats and catalogs (Iceberg, Delta, Hudi)
• Deploy query/​serving engines (Trino, ClickHouse, DuckDB)
• Implement streaming pipelines (Kafka, Flink)
• Set up orchestration (Dagster, Airflow, Prefect)
• Add governance, lineage, data quality, and cost controls

Triage Questions

1. Batch, streaming, or hybrid? What is the freshness SLO?
2. Append-only vs upserts/​deletes (CDC)? Is time travel required?
3. Primary query pattern: BI dashboards (high concurrency), ad-hoc joins, embedded analytics?
4. PII/​compliance: row/​column-level access, retention, audit logging?
5. Platform constraints: self-hosted vs cloud, preferred engines, team strengths?

Default Baseline (Good Starting Point)

• Storage: object storage + open table format (usually Iceberg)
• Catalog: REST/​Hive/​Glue/​Nessie/​Unity (match your platform)
• Transforms: SQLMesh or dbt (pick one and standardize)
• Lake query: Trino (or Spark for heavy compute/​ML workloads)
• Serving (optional): ClickHouse/​StarRocks/​Doris for low-latency BI
• Governance: DataHub/​OpenMetadata + OpenLineage
• Orchestration: Dagster/​Airflow/​Prefect

Workflow

1. Pick table format + catalog: references/​storage-formats.md (use assets/​cross-platform/​template-schema-evolution.md and assets/​cross-platform/​template-partitioning-strategy.md)
2. Design ingestion (batch/​incremental/​CDC): references/​ingestion-patterns.md (use assets/​cross-platform/​template-ingestion-governance-checklist.md and assets/​cross-platform/​template-incremental-loading.md)
3. Design transformations (bronze/​silver/​gold or data products): references/​transformation-patterns.md (use assets/​cross-platform/​template-data-pipeline.md)
4. Choose lake query vs serving engines: references/​query-engine-patterns.md
5. Add governance, lineage, and quality gates: references/​governance-catalog.md (use assets/​cross-platform/​template-data-quality-governance.md and assets/​cross-platform/​template-data-quality.md)
6. Plan operations + cost controls: references/​operational-playbook.md and references/​cost-optimization.md (use assets/​cross-platform/​template-data-quality-backfill-runbook.md and assets/​cross-platform/​template-cost-optimization.md)

Architecture Patterns

• Medallion (bronze/​silver/​gold): references/​architecture-patterns.md
• Data mesh (domain-owned data products): references/​architecture-patterns.md
• Streaming-first (Kappa): references/​streaming-patterns.md
• Diagrams/​mermaid snippets: references/​overview.md

Quick Start

dlt + ClickHouse

pip install "dlt[clickhouse]"
dlt init rest_api clickhouse
python pipeline.py

SQLMesh + DuckDB

pip install sqlmesh
sqlmesh init duckdb
sqlmesh plan && sqlmesh run

Reliability and Safety

Do

• Define data contracts and owners up front
• Add quality gates (freshness, volume, schema, distribution) per tier
• Make every pipeline idempotent and re-runnable (backfills are normal)
• Treat access control and audit logging as first-class requirements

Avoid

• Skipping validation to "move fast"
• Storing PII without access controls
• Pipelines that can't be re-run safely
• Manual schema changes without version control

Resources

Templates

Related Skills