Inside the lakehouse

Databricks, in production

Practical, sourced guides to building and running data platforms on Databricks: Lakeflow pipelines and ingestion, Databricks SQL, Unity Catalog governance, Mosaic AI, and the compute and cost levers data teams actually ship.

Unity AI Gateway capability maturity: four capabilities at GA status and four at Beta status as of August 2026, including routing, monitoring, Smart Routing, and MCP connectors

Engineering

Databricks Unity AI Gateway hits GA: a governance guide

Unity AI Gateway is now GA, bringing centralized AI traffic control, provider routing, MCP governance, and cost monitoring under Unity Catalog.

By Lars Cornelissen · Aug 10, 2026

All Databricks guides

Databricks

Databricks RBAC public preview: the exclusive access shift

Databricks RBAC lets users assume a role with only that role's permissions for the session, blocking accidental access to sensitive data through accumulated grants. The feature entered Public Preview on July 22, 2026.

Lars Cornelissen · Jul 27, 2026

Illustrative chart showing standard performance mode consuming roughly 30 percent fewer DBUs than performance-optimized mode for Databricks managed Iceberg materialized view refreshes, with performance mode at 100 DBUs and standard mode at 70 DBUs per refresh.

Databricks

Databricks managed Iceberg materialized views, explained

Managed Iceberg materialized views let external engines like Trino read your Databricks MVs. Now in Public Preview, they shift the lock-in calculus.

Lars Cornelissen · Jul 13, 2026

Abstract data visualization suggesting sub-second query latency with a dense band of concurrent user connections, illustrating the Lakehouse Real-Time serving engine target workload of thousands of concurrent users with sub-second SQL reads.

Databricks

Databricks Lakehouse//RT: sub-second SQL reads in beta

Lakehouse Real-Time is a serverless SQL warehouse for sub-second reads against Unity Catalog tables. It targets thousands of concurrent users but only supports SELECT queries via the Statement Execution API, and it is in Beta.

Lars Cornelissen · Jul 6, 2026

Unity AI Gateway budgets example showing a $5,000 shared Genie budget, $100 per-user threshold, $200 genie-code override, and $300 power-users override.

Databricks

Unity AI Gateway budgets: the spend guardrail guide

Unity AI Gateway budgets set shared and per-user AI spend limits for Genie and gateway traffic, with alerts and blocking for admins.

Lars Cornelissen · Jun 29, 2026

Databricks

Databricks Lakeflow Designer GA cost guide for teams

Databricks Lakeflow Designer is GA for visual, governed data prep. Use it for analyst-built transforms, but meter previews and jobs.

Lars Cornelissen · Jun 22, 2026

Databricks

Databricks PAT auto-scoping is a quiet job breaker

Databricks PAT auto-scoping narrows long-lived tokens after 30 days of observed API use. Audit automation now before jobs fail.

Lars Cornelissen · Jun 22, 2026

Databricks

Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, explained for builders

The Databricks Data Intelligence Platform is a lakehouse that unifies storage, compute, governance, and AI on open Delta tables. Here is how the pieces fit and where the cost goes.

Lars Cornelissen · Jun 7, 2026

Databricks Unity AI Gateway hits GA: a governance guide

All Databricks guides

Databricks RBAC public preview: the exclusive access shift

Databricks managed Iceberg materialized views, explained

Databricks Lakehouse//RT: sub-second SQL reads in beta

Unity AI Gateway budgets: the spend guardrail guide

Databricks Lakeflow Designer GA cost guide for teams

Databricks PAT auto-scoping is a quiet job breaker

Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, explained for builders

Enterprise data, told like a newsroom.