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Most teams that move to Databricks get the hard part right. They migrate the processing engine, rebuild the transformation logic, and stand up Unity Catalog. Then they leave Azure Data Factory running in the background: connected to everything, owned by nobody, and quietly accumulating cost and complexity. In this entry, that’s the gap we address.
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ML & AI
Enforcing Enterprise Naming Conventions in Databricks: The Agentic Way
Naming conventions only work if they're enforced — and a Confluence page nobody reads isn't enforcement. This post walks through using Databricks Workspace Skills to make naming rules executable in Genie Code, then scaling that to a catalog-wide audit agent built with Databricks Apps and DABS. The result is automated, repeatable governance that runs without requiring engineers to opt in.
How to (Efficiently) Process Change Data Feed in Databricks Delta
Databricks AUTO CDC isn't just the easiest way to process Change Data Feed, it's also the cheapest. A benchmark across 25 million INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operations found AUTO CDC outperformed Structured Streaming and SQL Warehouse on cost in every run, even as the target table grew to 72 million records. Structured Streaming remains the right choice for custom logic; AUTO CDC wins on standard SCD Type 1/2 patterns at scale.
How to Pass Terraform Outputs to Databricks’ DABS
As teams migrate infrastructure definitions into Declarative Automation Bundles, Terraform still owns the Azure layer — Key Vaults, resource groups, networking. This post walks through a clean, CI/CD-ready pattern for passing Terraform outputs directly into bundle variable overrides, eliminating manual config steps and the environment drift that follows them.
Genie Code Analysis: Two Weeks Later
Databricks Genie Code hit a 77.1% task success rate in production data science workflows — more than double what general-purpose coding agents achieve. But that performance is entirely conditional on the quality of your Unity Catalog metadata. SunnyData's two-week evaluation breaks down what works, what doesn't, and the governance layer you need before you go live.
5 Databricks Patterns That Look Fine Until They Aren't
Five common Databricks coding patterns — including undocumented API calls, manual SparkSession instantiation, and hardcoded Spark configs — that pass code review but fail silently in serverless environments or during platform migrations. For each anti-pattern, this post explains why it breaks and shows the correct native Databricks approach using DABS, the Databricks SDK, and dynamic job parameters.
Databricks Lakewatch: The Future of Agentic SIEM
Databricks Lakewatch replaces the traditional SIEM model with an Open Security Lakehouse — storing 100% of telemetry in open formats at up to 80% lower TCO. AI agents reason across years of unified data to detect and respond at machine speed, closing the visibility gap that legacy SIEMs were structurally forced to create. Early customers include Adobe and Dropbox, with broader availability following Private Preview.
Lakeflow Connect Free Tier: $35/Day Back in Your Budget
Databricks' permanent Lakeflow Connect free tier delivers 100 DBUs per workspace per day — covering up to 100 million records of ingestion at no additional compute cost. For enterprise teams running multiple workspaces, that's over $255,000 in avoided annual costs. This post breaks down the economics, architecture, and what it means for teams still paying a third-party ETL tax.
The Lakehouse Finally Has Real Transactions
Learn how Databricks multi-statement transactions use Unity Catalog catalog-managed commits to guarantee atomic updates across multiple Delta tables — with a step-by-step walkthrough.
Why Your Databricks Upgrade Is Incomplete If You're Still Running ADF
Still running ADF after moving to Databricks? Here's why it happens, what it's costing your governance story, and how Lakeflow Jobs closes the gap.
Your Databricks Stack Is Modern. Your Orchestration Isn't.
Most Databricks migrations modernize the processing engine and leave Azure Data Factory running untouched. This post explains why that gap is a compounding business risk, and maps out the three practical paths to migrating orchestration to Lakeflow Jobs, including the on-prem push pattern that removes the most common blocker.
Prioritize AI Quality by Establishing a Data Quality Pillar
AI quality isn't just a model problem — it starts with your data. This guide outlines six executive-grade requirements for establishing a data quality pillar in Databricks, and explains how agentic monitoring can help organizations scale quality across their entire data estate.
Deduplicating Data on the Databricks Lakehouse: Making joins, BI, and AI queries “safe by default.”
Learn 5 proven deduplication strategies for Databricks Lakehouse. Prevent duplicate data from breaking AI queries, BI dashboards, and analytics. Includes code examples.
The Nightmare of Initial Load (And How to Tame It)
Initial data loads don't have to be nightmares. Discover the split Bronze table pattern that separates historical backfills from incremental streaming.
You Pay for the Complexity of Your Move From On-Prem to Cloud
Moving data from on-prem to cloud shouldn't require 5+ systems. Discover why complexity costs you money and how Zerobus Ingest simplifies data pipelines.
Temp Tables Are Here, and They're Going to Change How You Use SQL
Learn how temporary tables in Databricks SQL warehouses enable materialized data, DML operations, and session-scoped ETL workflows. Complete with practical examples.