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5 things I wish I knew about Databricks … before I started.

Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash

How many times in your life, that is but a mist, have you thought, “If I had only known that in the beginning?” I feel as if I’ve committed that cardinal sin as a developer and Data Engineer … falling in love with a tool to the exclusion of all else. I mean truly, Databricks has brought Big Data to the masses, all you need is your laptop and 10 minutes of PySpark training before your spending gobs of money, processing massive amounts of data. Where else, and with what else can you do such things? Try it with EMR, good luck to you.

That being said, when you love something you start to notice the slight imperfections and problems with that something. You get kinda nit-picky. Such is life. I want to save some poor soul out there some heartache, that moment when you’ve been writing code for hours or days, and come upon a little surprise that makes your heart drop into your shoes, and the blood runs to your face. Here are 10 things I wish I knew about Databricks before I started. Maybe it will save you time, help you, who knows.

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You Only Need 2 Data Validations, That’s It.

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

I mean, I’m sort of being facetious and sort of not. I mean there is some truth that rings out in those words. I’m sure someone selling Data Observability tools, or writing Great Expectations all-day will not like the idea of relying on only 2 data validations. But honestly, these two are probably more than 80% of Data Teams are using today for validation, which is none. What 2 are you? Glad you asked.

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Thoughts on Saint Augustine, Rust vs Golang. Complexity, verbosity, and other matters.

Image: Saint Augustine of Hippo | Line engraving by P. Cool after M. de Vos | Wellcome Images

I’ve always enjoyed reading Mr. Augustine of Hippo, particularly “Confessions.” Ahead of his time in many ways. Although, you have to be into that sort of thing to find such topics interesting. It can be sort of dry, drawn out, verbose, and not for the faint of heart. Much like learning new programming languages. I’ve been messing with Golang off and on and here and there. Recently I added Rust to that list, more out of curiosity and to see what’s new in the world.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the theology of programming in the space of Data Engineering. It’s such a wide area that encompasses so many different skills, Data Engineering that is. Why do we do what we do, write what we write? Like Augustine I see both old and new all around me, some things change, but many things stay the same.

People find hills like Python, Scala, Golang, Rust, and then promptly decide to die on them. I enjoy different things simply because of the way they teach you things about yourself and the world.

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Exploring Delta Lake’s ZORDER, and Performance. On Databricks.

Photo by Joel Holland on Unsplash

I think Delta Lake is here to stay. With the recent news that Databricks is open-sourcing the full feature-set of Delta Lake, instead of keeping the best stuff for themselves, it probably has the most potential to be the number one go-to for the future of Data Lakes, especially within those organizations that are heavy Spark users.

One of the best parts about Delta Lake is that it’s easy to use, yet it has a rich feature set, making it a powerful option for Big Data storage and modeling. One of those features that promise a lot of performance benefits is something called ZORDER. Today I want to explore more in-depth what ZORDER is, when to use it, when not to use it, and most importantly test its performance during a number of common Spark operations.

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Thoughts on HTTP and JSON with Golang. And other Headaches.

Photo by Nik Shuliahin 💛💙 on Unsplash

I’ve been playing with Golang off and on for a few weeks, when I find the time, which is every few weeks between kids and fishing. I have become a little bit of a fan, wishing for more projects to take on with Go. It seems like a fairly straightforward language to pick up, the learning curve isn’t that bad, and it’s fast and powerful. I’ve found it a little more intuitive than Scala for example. I mean don’t get me wrong, nothing will take the place of Python in my life, but there’s always room for one more.

That being said, “But I have this against you…” when it comes to Go, and it has to do with JSON. All code is on GitHub.

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A Few Wonderful PySpark Features.

Photo by davisuko on Unsplash

Just when I think it cannot get more popular, it does. I have to admit, PySpark is probably the best thing that ever happened to Big Data. It made what was once a myth, approachable to the average person. No need for esoteric Java skills, no more MapReduce, just plain old Python. Another amazing thing about Spark in general, and by extension PySpark, is the sheer amount of out-of-the-box capabilities. I wanted to dedicate this post to a few amazing and wonderful features of PySpark that make Data Engineering fun and powerful.

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Great Expectations with Databricks and Apache Spark. A Tale of Data Quality.

Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

It still seems like the wild west of Data Quality these days. Tools like Apache Deque are just too much for most folks, and Data Quality is still new enough to the scene as a serious thought topic that most tools haven’t matured that much, and companies dropping money on some tool is still a little suspect. I’ve probably heard more about Great Expectations as a DQ tool than most.

With the popularity of PySpark as a Big Data tool, and Great Expectations coming into its own, I’ve been meaning to dive into what it would actually look like to to use Great Expectations at scale and answer some simple questions. How easy is it to get up and running with Spark, what’s the path of least resistance to getting some basic Data Quality checks in place in a data pipeline.

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My Journey from Data Analyst to Senior Data Engineer

My newsfeed these days is chock-full of “how to break into Data Engineering” these days. It’s made me a bit nostalgic, to say the least. I’ve been dreaming about those days gone by when I started out in the data world. I would say my experience was not so much “breaking in”, but more of a “weasel my way into” Data Engineering.

I didn’t get a Computer Science degree, not even close. I think there are many ways to get into Data Engineering, it’s probably easier than it ever has been in the past. We will fulfill our destiny in different ways, and that journey gives us a unique perspective and makes us “good” at certain things. This is my story.

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Data Engineering/Data Pipeline repo Project Template (free).

Probably one of the hardest hurdles to jump over when starting out in anything new, including Data Engineering and Data Pipelines, is knowing where to start. It always can be a little daunting. One aspect that can make or break any project, giving you the confidence to move forward like Sparticus to conquer, is having a good project template for your repository of code and logic that will encapsulate and present your code to others.

I’ve created a free and hopefully helpful Python blank GitHub project template that you can clone, change, and steal to your heart’s desire. I hope it will be helpful and set you going in the right direction for your next project.

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