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Populating a Data Lake with AWS Database Migration Service and Amazon Data Firehose

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Data lakes are great for holding large volumes of data, such as clickstream logs. But such data has limited usefulness unless you can combine it with data from your transactional, line-of-business databases. And this is where things get tricky. Simple approaches, such as replicating entire tables, don’t scale. Streaming approaches that include updates and deletes require logic to determine the latest value (or existence!) of any given row. All of which has to be translated into static data files in a data lake.

In this post I look at one approach to solve this problem: AWS Data Migration Service to capture changes from the source database and write them to a Kinesis Data Stream, and Amazon Data Firehose to load those records into Iceberg tables.

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Notes on a Hobby Project, or a Foray into HTMX

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What is HTMX? For many years I’ve been exclusively a back-end developer, using Java and more recently using Go. I have observed from a distance the churn in front end frameworks and the rise of Javascript-based single-page apps as the de facto thick client. I also happen to work for an excellent company that puts on an annual technical conference. A few years back, I was very intrigued by a talk given by Carson Gross. He described his invention, HTMX,…

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Automate the Boring Stuff with AI

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My motivation for creating tools often stems from a desire to get familiar with new technologies. This project was no different; I wanted to deepen my understanding of Generative AI. However, this wasn’t the primary reason for its creation. The real driving force was a persistent gap in my workflow that I couldn’t ignore any longer. Every so often I’ll encounter a task that makes me think, “If only this one thing was more like this,” or “If I could…

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Navigating Social Sweepstakes 2025: Insights & Strategies from Matt Kaufman

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Chariot Solutions is a dedicated partner to operators in the gaming industry, including the social sweepstakes category. We empower our clients to innovate and thrive in a competitive market. This is achieved through our tailored services in custom software development, cloud infrastructure, and data engineering. To gain deeper insights into the technical challenges facing this segment of the industry in 2025, we reached out to Matt Kaufman, Managing Director of Digital & Interactive Gaming at Eilers and Krejcik Gaming (EKG). …

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HealthTech Data Infrastructure Trends

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HealthTech Data Infrastructure Trends The future of healthcare is deeply connected to the pace and effectiveness of groundbreaking new technologies like wearable devices, artificial intelligence, and robotic surgery that are redefining clinical outcomes.  For the innovators behind this new tech, data is key. In tandem with these advances, data analytics can help detect disease, facilitate the transition to value-based care models, improve physician performance, even predict possible outbreaks. Timely, relevant, actionable data is the fuel that powers HealthTech and enables…

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What’s the point of Lambda SnapStart?

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Lambda SnapStart is intended to improve the cold start time for a Lambda function. It’s been available for Java workloads since 2022, and was recently released for Python and .Net workloads. It works by running the initialization code of your Lambda function when you release a version, and then storing an image of the Lambda execution environment. Cold starts load this image rather than running the initialization themselves. Given that cold starts happen unpredictably, and may be measured in seconds, this seems like a win-win situation.

The reality, as usual, is more nuanced. SnapStart introduces its own cold start delays, as it loads the image into the runtime. And it increases the time and effort of deployment. In this post I drill down into the nuance, so that you can decide whether it’s a worthwhile choice fo your project.

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Chariot Day Recap 2024

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A Charioteer is a highly skilled engineer that works for Chariot. When discussing the finer details of tuples and wormholes, it is easy to forget that each one of these engineers have a family and a life outside of the code. Every year the Charioteers get together at the Chariot office to show off their technical chops, but also some of my more favorite talks are ones about anything but code. The day starts with a wonderful breakfast to wake…

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SBRA Briefing Writeup

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  Dr. Jennifer Shatley, a leading expert in responsible gaming, delivered a powerful talk at SBRA BRIEFING ON RESPONSIBLE AND PROBLEM GAMING. She clearly distinguished between responsible gaming and problem gambling, which framed the rest of the discussion, highlighting the critical need for proactive measures to ensure gambling remains a safe and enjoyable pastime. The difference between responsible gaming and problem gambling can be summed up as follows: Responsible gaming is all about prevention, while problem gambling requires intervention. Think…

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