The Data Engineer’s Dilemma: Batch, Stream, or Hybrid?

The Data Engineer’s Dilemma: Batch, Stream, or Hybrid?

There’s a moment in every data engineer’s journey when the excitement of building pipelines meets a difficult, quiet question: Should this run in batch, or should it be real-time? It sounds technical — but it’s actually philosophical. Behind it lies a deeper question:What are we really optimizing for — freshness, simplicity, or reliability? Because you…

Elasticsearch Part 4: Analytical Queries
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Elasticsearch Part 4: Analytical Queries

Welcome back to our deep dive into Elasticsearch! So far, we’ve mastered the art of finding the right documents. We’ve become experts in queries, filters, and the mighty bool query. But what happens after you’ve retrieved your results? How do you make sense of the bigger picture? This is where the true analytical power of Elasticsearch shines: Aggregations. If queries…

elasticsearch logo for tutorial bool queries, highlighting and pagination
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Elasticsearch Queries – Part 3: Bool Queries and Pagination

Introduction If you’ve been following this series, you already know: Now it’s time for the real workhorse: the bool query.Why? Because no real-world search problem is solved by just one condition. Users expect relevance and restrictions: The bool query is how you glue all of these conditions together. By the way, I should also mention…

Elasticsearch Queries – Part 2: Practical Query Types
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Elasticsearch Queries – Part 2: Practical Query Types

In Part 1 of this series I walked through the foundations of Elasticsearch queries: the mental model, why mapping is your best friend, and how to choose between filters and matches. Now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and look at some of the practical query types that you’ll actually use when building real-world…

Elasticsearch Queries – Part 1: Queries and Filters
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Elasticsearch Queries – Part 1: Queries and Filters

When I first got to know Elasticsearch, I told myself: “Well, this is just another database… right?”But I was wrong. Elasticsearch is actually different. It kind of feels like a mix between a search engine and a database.To be honest, I’m still not very comfortable with it myself 🙂But in this post—which is the first…

My Favorite Python Libraries for Fast Data Exploration

My Favorite Python Libraries for Fast Data Exploration

Let me be honest: when I sit down with a fresh dataset, I’m not looking for ceremony. I’m looking for clarity. That first hour matters more than most people admit. I want to get a feel for the terrain—what’s messy, what’s surprising, what’s worth digging into. If I can’t answer “what’s going on here?” in…

cleaned data warehouse

Is Your Data Warehouse a Mess? Here’s a Practical Path to Clean It Up

One of the most common issues in many organizations and data teams is a messy and disorganized Data Warehouse. This problem usually develops over time due to rapid team growth, evolving analytics needs, onboarding new members without proper documentation, and an increase in temporary projects. The result? A chaotic data warehouse with inconsistent structures, duplicate…

data backup strategy

From Crisis to Stability: Backing Up and Protecting Data in Times of Peace

A few weeks ago, in the chaos of war and crisis, I talked to you about the importance of backups. From pg_dump and mysqldump to mongoexport and rsync; about how we can prevent data loss during critical situations. Now that things have calmed down a bit, it’s time to revisit the topic. In the previous…