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Architecture Articles

Deep dives on modern data architecture: Lakehouse patterns, distributed query engines (DuckDB, Trino), and building fast analytical databases.

The Context Lakehouse
AUGUST 14TH, 2026
Andre Noujaim

The Context Lakehouse

Architecture, Data Stack, Altertable Agent

Why the lakehouse is becoming the governed context foundation for humans, applications, and agents—not just an analytical destination.

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Hand the Agent a Map
JULY 22ND, 2026
Florian Valeye

Hand the Agent a Map

Altertable Agent, Architecture, Engineering

Search finds a match, not its context. Altertable's ontology and live entity graph let agents navigate to the evidence, one hop at a time.

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The DuckDB Bet
JULY 21ST, 2026
Sylvain Utard

The DuckDB Bet

Architecture, Engineering, Data Stack

DuckDB is showing up in warehouses, product-serving paths, and database servers. The shift is flexible execution without a central data copy.

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Data Warehouses & Lakehouses in 2026
JULY 20TH, 2026
Sylvain Utard

Data Warehouses & Lakehouses in 2026

Architecture, Engineering, Data Stack

A practical 2026 comparison of warehouses and lakehouses, from Snowflake and BigQuery to Databricks, DuckDB, and Altertable.

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Lakehouse as Context Store
JULY 15TH, 2026
Sylvain Utard

Lakehouse as Context Store

Architecture, Engineering, Data Stack

Why the lakehouse becomes the working context store for agents: live data, telemetry, definitions, and company knowledge in one governed foundation.

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Stack Drift
JUNE 30TH, 2026
Sylvain Utard

Stack Drift

Architecture, Engineering, Data Stack

Why mature data stacks keep accumulating copy layers, and how direct relational federation gives dbt a simpler path over live operational sources.

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Know What a Query Reads Before It Runs
JUNE 15TH, 2026
Florian Valeye

Know What a Query Reads Before It Runs

Architecture, Altertable Agent, Performance

Row estimates only hint at what an agent will read. Bytes pin it down. Our explain returns them from catalog metadata, before the engine touches a file.

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Let Agents Render the Platform
MAY 25TH, 2026
Florian Valeye

Let Agents Render the Platform

Architecture, Altertable Agent, Engineering

Charts, queries, and interactive UI now render inside AI agents through MCP Apps—the same components as altertable.ai.

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Memory Is Not a Database
MAY 18TH, 2026
Florian Valeye

Memory Is Not a Database

Altertable Agent, Architecture, Engineering

Intelligence without memory is nothing. The right model is memory that lives, forgets, and knows where it belongs.

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Pruning Top-N Queries
FEBRUARY 3RD, 2026
Sylvain Utard

Pruning Top-N Queries

Open Source, Performance, Architecture

A deep dive into DuckLake PR #668 and how Top-N dynamic filter pruning turns ORDER BY + LIMIT from full scans into metadata-driven execution.

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Upside-Down Architecture
JANUARY 20TH, 2026
Yannick Utard

Upside-Down Architecture

Architecture, Engineering

Most analytics queries scan <100MB. We explore a hybrid architecture where compute moves between servers and your local machine, powered by DuckDB and DuckLake.

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Lessons from Search
JANUARY 13TH, 2026
Sylvain Utard

Lessons from Search

Performance, Architecture, Engineering

Real-time analytics faces the small-file problem search engines solved. DuckLake's tiered compaction brings those merge strategies to streaming analytics.

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Stop Batching Analytics
DECEMBER 30TH, 2025
Sylvain Utard

Stop Batching Analytics

Analytics, Architecture, Performance

Why we're forcing analytics through complex batch pipelines when append-only data should work like logs. The warehouse constraint that stopped making sense.

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Rethinking the Lakehouse
JULY 30TH, 2025
Yannick Utard

Rethinking the Lakehouse

Architecture, Performance, Data Stack

Breaking down our storage and query architecture: why we're leaning into Apache Iceberg and why DuckDB is emerging as our real-time query engine of choice.

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Under the Hood: Agents
JULY 15TH, 2025
Sylvain Utard

Under the Hood: Agents

Altertable Agent, Architecture, Engineering

Altertable agents think ahead. Powered by custom lakehouse and MCP, they monitor, investigate, and act on your data autonomously.

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What We're Building
JULY 8TH, 2025
Sylvain Utard

What We're Building

Product, Architecture, Altertable Agent

Most data platforms wait for questions. Altertable doesn't. We're building an AI-native data OS that turns raw data into continuous insight.

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Semantic Layers in 2025
JULY 1ST, 2025
Sylvain Utard

Semantic Layers in 2025

Semantic Layer, Architecture, Analytics

We tested four semantic layer approaches: Looker, Omni, Cube.dev, and dbt MetricFlow. Here's what we learned about each.

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Behind the Stack
JUNE 10TH, 2025
Sylvain Utard

Behind the Stack

Architecture, Engineering

Our tech stack: Rails for backend velocity, Rust for high-performance ingestion, React and Urql for UIs, Iceberg for data lake, Trino for federated queries.

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The Data Stack Is Broken
MAY 20TH, 2025
Sylvain Utard

The Data Stack Is Broken

Data Stack, Architecture, Product

Most data sits idle—trapped behind complexity, bloated budgets, and brittle tooling. The modern data stack promised agility but delivered a slow, siloed maze.

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