The evolution of data management for analytics

Innovations in data management and processing over the last several decades have laid the foundations of modern-day analytic systems. When you look at the analytics landscape of a typical mature organization, you will find the footprints of many of these innovations in their data analytics platforms. As a data engineer, you may come across analytic pipelines that were built using technologies from different generations, and you may be expected to understand them. Therefore, it is important to be familiar with some of the key developments in analytics over time, as well as to understand the foundational concepts of analytical data storage, data management, and data pipelines.

Databases and data warehouses

Data processing and analytic systems have evolved over several decades. In the 1980s, the focus was on batch processing, where data would be processed in nightly runs on large mainframe computers.

In the 1990s, the use of databases...