The data platform, reviewed.
9 articles
· 3 min read
The executive mosaic, the wall of red, the vanity grid and the one that works. A taxonomy, with verdicts, of the artifacts BI budgets actually produce.
#bi#dashboards#practice
· 1 min read
In defense of the least popular conclusion a review can reach, and why the six-month delay keeps outperforming the launch-week migration.
#practice#verdicts
· 1 min read
Vendor benchmarks measure the vendor's best day. A short argument for running your own worst one, with our usual apologies to marketing.
#benchmarks#practice
· 4 min read
Access control moved into catalogs and policy moved into code. The governance programs that work in 2026 are the ones nobody has to schedule a meeting with.
#governance#catalogs#access
· 4 min read
Three years after the discourse peak, contracts settled into a useful, unglamorous role: schema enforcement at team boundaries. A review of what stuck.
#contracts#quality#governance
· 2 min read
Schemas change; the only choice is how much warning anyone gets. The four strategies in the wild, reviewed from safest to most exciting.
#schemas#contracts#pipelines
· 2 min read
CDC turns the database log into a stream of what changed. How it works, where it beats polling, and the operational bill nobody quotes up front.
#cdc#pipelines#streaming
· 4 min read
Before buying an observability platform, run the four checks that catch most incidents. A review of the floor, not the ceiling.
#quality#testing#pipelines
· 3 min read
Real-time pipelines cost real money and most dashboards are read weekly. A defense of batch, with the arithmetic that vendors skip.
#streaming#batch#architecture
New reviews and printed corrections, by email, no more than weekly. The verdicts do not soften in transit.
The Vertex Journal