Analysis

Performance Comparison: Athena versus Redshift

I’ve always been a fan of database servers: self-contained entities that manage both storage and compute, and give you knobs to turn to optimize your queries. The flip side is that I have an inherent distrust of services such as Athena, which promise to run queries efficiently on structured data split between many files in a data lake. It just doesn’t seem natural; where are the knobs?

So, since I had data generated for my post on Athena performance with different file types, I decided to use that data in a performance comparison with Redshift.

Athena Performance Comparison: Avro, JSON, and Parquet

In my “Friends Don’t Let Friends Use JSON” post, I noted that I preferred the Avro file format to Parquet, because it was easier to write code to use it. I expected some pushback, and got it: Parquet is “much” more performant. So I decided to do some benchmarking.

Turbopack benchmark numbers questioned by Vite creator, Evan You

In the most recent release of Next.js, an alpha of a rust-based build tool was made available in alpha as a preview. This tool, Turbopack, is written by a team that includes the Webpack founder, Tobias Koppers who recently joined Vercel. Turbopack build performance claims During a presentation by Turbopack engineer Maia Teegarden benchmarks were … Read More

Next.js 13 is released with a new powerful build system and layout engine

Next.js 13 is now available – big changes and a new build system Yesterday Vercel announced Next.js, the latest version of their server-powered React platform. Vercel has been innovating in the JavaScript application server space since their inception in 2013. We had a talk on Next.js in 2017 at Philly ETE from the founder, Guillermo … Read More

A 20th Anniversary Look Back in Technology: Tom Purcell

Tom Purcell, a consultant and founding member of the Chariot Solutions team, has seen technology come and go. On our 20th anniversary in business, Tom gives us a humorous look back to the tools and technologies that came, went, and stayed since Chariot became a company in 2002.