Alex Merced — Developer and technical writer sharing in-depth insights on data engineering, Apache Iceberg, data lakehouse architectures, Python tooling, and modern analytics platforms, with a strong focus on practical, hands-on learning.
333 articles from this blog
A step-by-step tutorial on building a JSON API in Scala using the Play framework, covering project setup, database configuration, and controller creation.
A guide to building a cost-effective, high-performance, and self-service data lakehouse architecture, addressing common pitfalls and outlining key principles.
A tutorial on building full CRUD REST APIs using Flask and FastAPI with the Psycopg2 PostgreSQL adapter, comparing it to ORMs.
A tutorial on building a local Data Lakehouse using Docker Compose with Apache Spark, Minio, Dremio, and Nessie.
Project Nessie is a version control system for data lakes, bringing Git-like operations to manage and track changes in data assets.
An overview of popular file encryption algorithms like AES, MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-2, explaining their uses and how to choose the right one for data security.
A guide comparing popular data compression codecs (zstd, brotli, lz4, gzip, snappy) for Parquet files, explaining their trade-offs for big data.
Explains Project Nessie, an open-source data catalog for Apache Iceberg tables, and its importance for data engineers and architects building data lakehouses.
Explores catalog-level data versioning with Project Nessie and Dremio Arctic, covering branching, rollbacks, and multi-table transactions for data lakehouses.
Explains the data lakehouse concept, Dremio's role as a platform, and Apache Iceberg's function as a table format for modern data architectures.
A tutorial on integrating the SimpleRPC framework with SvelteKit 1.0 and TypeScript to create a type-safe RPC API.
A tutorial on building a todo list application using the Solid Start meta-framework for SolidJS, covering setup, routing, and data handling.
A tutorial on building a Solid-Start application with an integrated tRPC API, covering setup, schema definition, and client generation.
A tutorial on building a GraphQL API within a Solid-Start application, covering setup, schema definition, and resolvers.
A guide to configuring Apache Spark for use with the Apache Iceberg table format, covering packages, flags, and programmatic setup.
A hands-on tutorial for setting up a Docker environment to experiment with the Apache Iceberg table format using Spark SQL.
A glossary defining key web development, programming, and software engineering terms for 2022.
An introduction to modern data systems, explaining OLTP, OLAP, data warehouses, data lakes, and the roles of data engineers, analysts, and scientists.
A guide comparing JSON, YAML, and TOML configuration file formats, showing syntax examples and use cases.
A guide to handling multiple API calls in JavaScript, covering independent parallel requests and sequential dependent requests using async/await and Promise.all.
