https://www.vertexjournal.com/ Independent reviews of data platforms: warehouses, lakehouses, pipelines, BI and governance, with explicit verdicts. en Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/the-benchmark-you-didnt-run/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/the-benchmark-you-didnt-run/ Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Vendor benchmarks measure the vendor's best day. A short argument for running your own worst one, with our usual apologies to marketing. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/governance-that-ships/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/governance-that-ships/ Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT 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. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/open-table-format-standoff/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/open-table-format-standoff/ Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Iceberg, Delta and the rest converged on features and moved the war to catalogs. Where the actual lock-in lives in 2026, and what to standardize on. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/orchestrators-compared/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/orchestrators-compared/ Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Airflow 3.2 shipped asset partitioning, Dagster went pay-as-you-go, and the asset-versus-task argument is ending in convergence. A review. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/bi-migration-real-costs/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/bi-migration-real-costs/ Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT The license comparison is the cheapest part of the spreadsheet. Where BI migrations actually spend their budget, and the line items procurement never sees. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/data-contracts-in-practice/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/data-contracts-in-practice/ Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Three years after the discourse peak, contracts settled into a useful, unglamorous role: schema enforcement at team boundaries. A review of what stuck. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/postgres-is-enough/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/postgres-is-enough/ Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT pg_duckdb hit 1.0 and made the boring answer better. When your warehouse should be your Postgres, and the three signals that the honeymoon is ending. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/warehouse-cost-levers/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/warehouse-cost-levers/ Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Most warehouse bills respond to four interventions. The ranking, the yields we have seen, and the lever everyone pulls first that matters least. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/elt-won-now-what/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/elt-won-now-what/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Transformation moved into the warehouse and brought its costs along. What the Fusion-era tooling race says about where the pain actually is. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/schema-evolution-strategies/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/schema-evolution-strategies/ Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Schemas change; the only choice is how much warning anyone gets. The four strategies in the wild, reviewed from safest to most exciting. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/duckdb-single-node-renaissance/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/duckdb-single-node-renaissance/ Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT DuckDB made one machine respectable again. A review of what the distributed decade got wrong about the size of actual data. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/transformation-tooling-rundown/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/transformation-tooling-rundown/ Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT The SQL transformation layer has one incumbent, one architectural challenger and a lot of noise. A rundown organized around the pain each tool removes. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/lakehouse-or-warehouse/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/lakehouse-or-warehouse/ Sat, 11 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT The formats converged, the engines cross-read each other, and the real decision is about the team you have, not the architecture you admire. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/cdc-primer/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/cdc-primer/ Wed, 25 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT 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. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/reverse-etl-do-you-need-it/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/reverse-etl-do-you-need-it/ Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT Syncing warehouse tables back into SaaS tools is sometimes necessary and often a symptom. How to tell which one you have. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/minimum-viable-data-quality/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/minimum-viable-data-quality/ Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT Before buying an observability platform, run the four checks that catch most incidents. A review of the floor, not the ceiling. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/streaming-when-batch-wins/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/streaming-when-batch-wins/ Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT Real-time pipelines cost real money and most dashboards are read weekly. A defense of batch, with the arithmetic that vendors skip. The editors https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/semantic-layer-reality-check/ https://www.vertexjournal.com/reviews/semantic-layer-reality-check/ Sun, 03 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT Define the metric once, serve it everywhere. The promise is right, the adoption math is harder, and the graveyard has a pattern worth reading. The editors