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That Tuesday Morning When I Finally Fixed Our Ten-Minute Queries

The Ten-Minute Query I’m sitting at my laptop on a Tuesday morning, waiting. The progress bar on my screen says ‘Query running… 4 minutes, 37 seconds.’ I lean back in my chair and let out this long sigh that probably says more than I intended. My manager walks past my desk. She glances at my screen, and I can see that look—the one that says she already knows what I’m about to tell her. I didn’t need to explain.

Friday, January 16, 2026 Read
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Why Dimensional Modeling Isn't Dead—It's Just Getting Started

The Great Data Modeling Debate Nobody Asked For Another meeting where someone confidently declared, “We don’t need data modeling anymore—just dump everything in the data lake and let analysts figure it out.” I’ve heard variations of this statement for years now, in meetings or at conferences. The pitch is always the same: traditional data warehousing is dead, dimensional modeling is a relic from the 90s, and modern big data tools have made structured modeling obsolete. Schema-on-read is the future. Agility over architecture.

Friday, November 7, 2025 Read
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The Art and Science of Conceptual Data Modeling: Building Pipelines That Last

Introduction: Why Conceptual Data Modeling Makes or Breaks Your Pipeline Ever found yourself staring at a faulty data pipeline, wondering where it all went wrong? Join the club. I’ve been there too many times to count. The hard truth? Most pipeline failures aren’t technical issues—they’re conceptual ones. We get so caught up in the how (tools, languages, frameworks) that we completely miss the what and why of our data needs.

Saturday, May 17, 2025 Read
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Data Modeling Showdown: Kimball vs One Big Table vs Relational

Introduction When architecting a data warehouse, one of the most crucial decisions is choosing the right data modeling approach. Like selecting the right tool for a job, each modeling methodology has its strengths and ideal use cases. Today, we’ll explore three popular approaches: Kimball’s dimensional modeling (star schema), the one big table approach, and traditional relational modeling. The Dataset: Understanding Our Example To illustrate these approaches, let’s consider a retail sales system with these core components:

Saturday, January 25, 2025 Read