This MCP Server Could Have Been a JSON File

There's a lot of buzz around MCP. I'm not convinced it needs to exist.

Sep 11 • 

Chris

24

DataFrames, Multi-Engine Queries, and Xorq With Hussain Sultan

Hussain Sultan, the co-founder of Xorq, discusses the broken DataFrame ecosystem and how Xorq is fixing it.

Sep 2 • 

Chris

10

August 2025

I'm Still Here! Let's Catch Up.

The latest on Designing Data-Intensive Applications, SlateDB, AI, Materialized View Capital, and forthcoming newsletter posts.

Aug 27 • 

Chris

9

May 2025

Kafka: The End of the Beginning

A decade of focus on adoption has paid off. Now it's time to innovate.

May 30 • 

Chris

30

April 2025

Everything You Need to Know About Incremental View Maintenance

An overview of incremental view maintenance, why it’s useful, and how it's implemented.

Apr 18 • 

Chris

24

March 2025

AI IDEs Need Moats

VS Code eliminated the switching cost for AI IDEs. They need to build moats to survive. Partnering with software vendors and new open source projects…

Mar 12 • 

Chris

17

February 2025

These Aren’t the Catalogs You’re Looking For

Metadata is useful for data warehouses, streaming systems, humans, and machines. We don't need different catalogs for each use case, though. Catalog…

Feb 21 • 

Chris

8

Epsio, IVMs, and Differential Dataflow With Gilad Kleinman

Gilad Kleinman, CEO of Epsio, talks with me about incremental view maintenance (IVM). We discuss use cases, the history of IVM, how Epsio is different…

Feb 11 • 

Chris

8

January 2025

Infrastructure Vendors Are in a Tough Spot

Cloud native, AI-enabled, post-ZIRP companies are the new apex predator.

Jan 13 • 

Chris

30

December 2024

S3 Is the New SFTP

Customers want their data. A customer data lake is a great way to give it to them.

Dec 16, 2024 • 

Chris

38

The Quest for a Distributed POSIX-Compatible Filesystem

Distributed POSIX filesystems have proven elusive, but we're getting closer. Perhaps that's all we need.

Dec 5, 2024 • 

Chris

9

November 2024

It's Time to Merge Analytics and Data Engineering (Again)

Data pipelines are commoditized and analytics engineers don't provide enough value.

Nov 18, 2024 • 

Chris

44