Why it matters

Data lakes dominate modern analytics. Understanding shapes data platform design.

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The architecture

Storage: object store, typically Parquet.

Metadata: Iceberg, Delta, Hudi lakehouse formats.

Data lake stackObject storageS3/GCS/ADLSTable formatIceberg/Delta/HudiQuery enginesAthena/BQ/PrestoIceberg/Delta/Hudi add ACID + time travel + schema evolution to Parquet
Lakehouse stack.
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How it works end to end

Athena/BigQuery/Redshift Spectrum: SQL on data lake.

Presto/Trino: open query engine.

Databricks/Snowflake: managed lakehouses.

Iceberg: growing as open table format standard.