InternshipKey terms and common mistakes
The words you will hear in Databricks & Snowflake work and the mistakes that most often cost interns approvals.
Key terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Lakehouse | Data-lake storage with warehouse features |
| Virtual warehouse | Snowflake compute that runs queries |
| Delta Lake | Table format with transactions and versions on Parquet |
| Medallion architecture | Bronze, silver and gold data layers |
| MERGE | An upsert: update matches, insert new rows |
| Star schema | A fact table linked to dimension tables |
dbt | SQL transformations as tested, version-controlled models |
| Time Travel | Querying data as it was at an earlier time |
Common mistakes to avoid
- Leaving warehouses or clusters running when idle.
- Using SELECT * on huge tables.
- Reloading whole tables daily instead of incremental MERGE loads.
- Skipping data quality tests between layers.
- Giving every analyst access to personal data columns.
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