Frequently asked questions

Databricks SQL is part of an entirely new product category called the Lakehouse. The Lakehouse is an alternative to data lakes and data warehouses. This prompts a lot of interest and questions from prospective customers. I am sure that you will also have a lot of questions, even after spending time reading this book.

So, here is a list of such questions and their answers, in no particular order.

How does Databricks SQL define small, medium, and large table sizes?

If we think about defining the size of tables on traditional systems, it could depend on the number of rows, the length of the records, or the number of nodes that the table is sharded across.

Since the Lakehouse enables big data processing, it can accommodate all sizes of datasets. You do not have to provision computation resources separately for small, medium, and large tables. Tuning the warehouse’s size is easy as well – if queries are running slow, increase the warehouse...