I’ve been pulled into a lot of slow-query war rooms over the years, and they...
Read MoreA Data Systems Blog for Engineers
Clear blog written on cloud architecture, databases, and AI engineering drawn from real client work, written for engineers who want depth in data systems without the noise.
No fluff. No hype. Just clear explanations of how modern data systems actually work.
This is a data systems blog written from inside the work, not above it. I spend my days designing schemas, debugging slow queries, scaling infrastructure on AWS and Azure and building RAG pipelines that have to actually return useful answers in production. The articles here come out of that what worked, what didn’t and the parts of the story that the official documentation tends to leave out.
The three threads I write about cloud and DevOps, database engineering, and AI systems aren’t separate disciplines. A modern application is a database problem dressed up as a cloud problem with an AI layer on top. So the writing moves between them naturally, depending on what the engineering work itself called for.
If you’re an engineer, a technical founder, or someone evaluating whether a vendor’s pitch holds up under scrutiny, you’re the reader I write for.
What This Data Systems Blog Covers
Recent Articles from the Data Systems Blog
When to Use Each AWS Database Service
I’ve watched the AWS database console page reshape more architecture meetings than any whiteboard. Somebody...
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Database Choices That Quietly Kill Your AWS Bill
The most expensive database decision I've reviewed this year wasn't a decision at all. It...
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Why Your RAG System Is Actually a Search Problem
I’ve reviewed a fair number of RAG systems that “mostly work,” and the complaint is...
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The Real Cost of an LLM Call vs a SQL Query
I keep meeting the same architecture decision dressed up in new clothes. A team has...
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Most Teams Don’t Need a Vector Database
The word "embeddings" shows up in a planning doc, and within a sentence or two...
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Postgres Does More Than You Think
I've sat in a lot of architecture conversations, and they tend to share the same...
Read MoreLearn data systems, one concept at a time.
A structured approach to mastering data systems.
Fundamentals explained in simple language, without skipping the “why”.
Explained architectures, trade-offs, and real-world design decisions.
Concepts to real pipelines, databases, and AI systems that can actually work.
Most data systems blogs are either vendor marketing dressed up as education or junior tutorials that stop right where the interesting problems start. I’m trying to write the blog I wish existed when I was learning this stuff concrete, opinionated and written by someone who’s still in the trenches.