The summary.
ROW STORAGE SUITS TRANSACTIONS; COLUMN STORAGE SUITS ANALYSIS
Which is why a read replica solves load but not query performance — the storage layout is still wrong for scanning.
Analytical stores suit append-heavy work; updates and deletes are expensive there.
SET SPENDING LIMITS AND SCAN LIMITS BEFORE THE FIRST QUERY
Usage-billed warehouses charge in foreign currency, so costs move with the exchange rate independently of your usage.
A SINGLE-MACHINE ANALYTICAL ENGINE COVERS MOST ORGANISATIONS
With no infrastructure at all. Establish your actual volume before reaching for distributed tooling.
TABLE FORMATS PREVENT CORRUPTION, NOT DISORDER
You still have to enforce schema, quality and documentation, or you get a lake nobody trusts.
USE A COLUMNAR FORMAT FOR ANALYTICAL STORAGE, ESSENTIALLY ALWAYS
Delimited text files with embedded separators are a permanent source of corruption.
DATA TRANSFER OUT IS FREQUENTLY CHARGED ABOVE STORAGE
Cross-region and cross-provider designs accumulate cost silently.
PARTITION BY WHAT QUERIES FILTER ON, AND COMPACT REGULARLY
Incremental loads produce small files continuously, and many small files perform badly everywhere.
