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Denny Lee

Speaker

Denny Lee

13

talks

PM Director, Developer Relations Databricks

Denny Lee is a Product Management Director and Principal Developer Advocate at Databricks with deep expertise in distributed systems, AI, and data science. He is a longtime contributor to Apache Spark and MLflow and a maintainer of Unity Catalog and Delta Lake. He previously worked at Microsoft on Azure Cosmos DB, HDInsight, and SQL Server, and led data science engineering at SAP Concur. He holds a Master’s in Biomedical Informatics from OHSU and has built large-scale data platforms for healthcare and enterprise use. His technical focus includes AI, Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Apache Spark, ML, and genomics.

Bio from: Databricks DATA + AI Summit 2023

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Building Agents with Agent Bricks and MCP

Want to create AI agents that can do more than just generate text? Join us to explore how combining Databricks' Agent Bricks with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) unlocks powerful tool-calling capabilities. We'll show you how MCP provides a standardized way for AI agents to interact with external tools, data and APIs, solving the headache of fragmented integration approaches. Learn to build agents that can retrieve both structured and unstructured data, execute custom code and tackle real enterprise challenges.

lightning_talk
with Sandy Ryza (Databricks) , Denny Lee (Databricks) , Xiao Li (Databricks)

Join us for an insightful Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Declarative Pipelines — a powerful approach to simplify and optimize data workflows. Learn how to define data transformations using high-level, SQL-like semantics, reducing boilerplate code while improving performance and maintainability. Whether you're building ETL processes, feature engineering pipelines, or analytical workflows, this session will cover best practices, real-world use cases and how Declarative Pipelines can streamline your data applications. Bring your questions and discover how to make your data processing more intuitive and efficient!

Join us for an in-depth Ask Me Anything (AMA) on how Rust is revolutionizing Lakehouse formats like Delta Lake and Apache Iceberg through projects like delta-rs and iceberg-rs! Discover how Rust’s memory safety, zero-cost abstractions and fearless concurrency unlock faster development and higher-performance data operations. Whether you’re a data engineer, Rustacean or Lakehouse enthusiast, bring your questions on how Rust is shaping the future of open table formats!

talk
with Denny Lee (Databricks) , Simon Whiteley (Advancing Analytics)

Two industry veterans have been debating data architecture, tearing apart trends and tinkering with tech for decades and they’re bringing the conversation live — and you’re in control. Got a burning question about lake structures or internal performance? Worried about AI taking over the world? Want straight-talking opinions on the latest hype? Need real-world advice from the people who the experts get advice from? Want to get the juicy behind-the-scenes gossip about any announcements and shockwaves from the Keynotes? This is your chance to have your questions answered! Submit your questions ahead of time or bring them on the day — no topic is off-limits (though there's always a risk of side quests into coffee, sci-fi, or the quirks of English weather). Come for the insights, stay for the chaos.

talk
with Jonathan Hsieh (LanceDB) , Cathy Yin (Databricks) , Andrew Shieh (Databricks) , Ziyi Yang (Databricks) , Andy Konwinski (Databricks) , Denny Lee (Databricks) , Asfandyar Qureshi (Databricks) , Yuki Watanabe (Databricks) , Brandon Cui (Databricks) , Andrew Drozdov (Databricks) , Anand Kannappan (Patronus AI) , Harsh Panchal (Databricks) , Tomu Hirata (Databricks) , Daya Khudia (Databricks) , Jose Javier Gonzalez (Databricks) , Jasmine Collins (Databricks) , MAHESWARAN SATHIAMOORTHY (Bespoke Labs) , Jonathan Chang (Databricks) , Matei Zaharia (Databricks) , Alexander Trott (Databricks) , Tejas Sundaresan (Databricks) , Pallavi Koppol (Databricks) , Jonathan Frankle (Databricks) , Erich Elsen (Databricks) , Ivan Zhou (Databricks) , Davis Blalock , Gayathri Murali (META)

https://bit.ly/devconnectdais

Delta Lake: The Definitive Guide

Ready to simplify the process of building data lakehouses and data pipelines at scale? In this practical guide, learn how Delta Lake is helping data engineers, data scientists, and data analysts overcome key data reliability challenges with modern data engineering and management techniques. Authors Denny Lee, Tristen Wentling, Scott Haines, and Prashanth Babu (with contributions from Delta Lake maintainer R. Tyler Croy) share expert insights on all things Delta Lake--including how to run batch and streaming jobs concurrently and accelerate the usability of your data. You'll also uncover how ACID transactions bring reliability to data lakehouses at scale. This book helps you: Understand key data reliability challenges and how Delta Lake solves them Explain the critical role of Delta transaction logs as a single source of truth Learn the Delta Lake ecosystem with technologies like Apache Flink, Kafka, and Trino Architect data lakehouses with the medallion architecture Optimize Delta Lake performance with features like deletion vectors and liquid clustering

Simon + Denny Live: Ask Us Anything

Simon and Denny have been discussing and debating all things Delta, Lakehouse and Apache Spark™ on their regular webshow. Whether you want advice on lake structures, want to hear their opinions on the latest trends and hype in the data world, or you simply have a tech implementation question to throw at two seasoned experts, these two will have something to say on the matter. In their previous shows, Simon and Denny focused on building out a sample lakehouse architecture, refactoring and tinkering as new features came out, but now we're throwing the doors open for any and every question you might have.

So if you've had a persistent question and think these two can help, this is the session for you. There will be a question submission form shared prior to the event, so the team will be prepped with a whole bunch of topics to talk through. Simon and Denny want to hear your questions, which they can field drawing from a wealth of industry experience, wide ranging community engagement and their differing perspectives as external consultant and internal Databricks respectively. There's also a chance they'll get distracted and go way off track talking about coffee, sci-fi, nerdery or the English weather. It happens.

Talk by: Simon Whiteley and Denny Lee

Connect with us: Website: https://databricks.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/databricks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/databricks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/databricksinc Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/databricksinc

Delta Kernel: Simplifying Building Connectors for Delta

Since the release of Delta 2.0, the project has been growing at a breakneck speed. In this session, we will cover all the latest capabilities that makes Delta Lake the best format for the lakehouse. Based on lessons learned from this past year, we will introduce Project Aqueduct and how we will simplify building Delta Lake APIs from Rust and Go to Trino, Flink, and PySpark.

Talk by: Tathagata Das and Denny Lee

Connect with us: Website: https://databricks.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/databricks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/databricks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/databricksinc Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/databricksinc

Live from the Lakehouse: Lakehouse observability, and Delta Lake. With Michael Milirud and Denny Lee

Hear from two guests. First, Michael Milirud (Sr Manager, Product Management, Databricks) on Lakehouse monitoring and observability. Second guest, Denny Lee (Sr Staff Developer Advocate, Databricks), discusses Delta Lake. Hosted by Holly Smith (Sr Resident Solutions Architect, Databricks) and Jimmy Obeyeni (Strategic Account Executive, Databricks)

Connect with us: Website: https://databricks.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/databricks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/databricks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/databricksinc Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/databricksinc

Simon Whiteley + Denny Lee Live Ask Me Anything

Simon and Denny Build A Thing is a live webshow, where Simon Whiteley (Advancing Analytics) and Denny Lee (Databricks) are building out a TV Ratings Analytics tool, working through the various challenges of building out a Data Lakehouse using Databricks. In this session, they'll be talking through their Lakehouse Platform, revisiting various pieces of functionality, and answering your questions, Live!

This is your chance to ask questions around structuring a lake for enterprise data analytics, the various ways we can use Delta Live Tables to simplify ETL or how to get started serving out data using Databricks SQL. We have a whole load of things to talk through, but we want to hear YOUR questions, which we can field from industry experience, community engagement and internal Databricks direction. There's also a chance we'll get distracted and talk about the Expanse for far too long.

Connect with us: Website: https://databricks.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/databricksinc Twitter: https://twitter.com/databricks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/data... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/databricksinc/

Learning Spark, 2nd Edition

Data is bigger, arrives faster, and comes in a variety of formatsâ??and it all needs to be processed at scale for analytics or machine learning. But how can you process such varied workloads efficiently? Enter Apache Spark. Updated to include Spark 3.0, this second edition shows data engineers and data scientists why structure and unification in Spark matters. Specifically, this book explains how to perform simple and complex data analytics and employ machine learning algorithms. Through step-by-step walk-throughs, code snippets, and notebooks, youâ??ll be able to: Learn Python, SQL, Scala, or Java high-level Structured APIs Understand Spark operations and SQL Engine Inspect, tune, and debug Spark operations with Spark configurations and Spark UI Connect to data sources: JSON, Parquet, CSV, Avro, ORC, Hive, S3, or Kafka Perform analytics on batch and streaming data using Structured Streaming Build reliable data pipelines with open source Delta Lake and Spark Develop machine learning pipelines with MLlib and productionize models using MLflow

PySpark Cookbook

Dive into the world of big data processing and analytics with the "PySpark Cookbook". This book provides over 60 hands-on recipes for implementing efficient data-intensive solutions using Apache Spark and Python. By mastering these recipes, you'll be equipped to tackle challenges in large-scale data processing, machine learning, and stream analytics. What this Book will help me do Set up and configure PySpark environments effectively, including working with Jupyter for enhanced interactivity. Understand and utilize DataFrames for data manipulation, analysis, and transformation tasks. Develop end-to-end machine learning solutions using the ML and MLlib modules in PySpark. Implement structured streaming and graph-processing solutions to analyze and visualize data streams and relationships. Deploy PySpark applications to the cloud infrastructure efficiently using best practices. Author(s) This book is co-authored by None Lee and None Drabas, who are experienced professionals in data processing and analytics leveraging Python and Apache Spark. With their deep technical expertise and a passion for teaching through practical examples, they aim to make the complex concepts of PySpark accessible to developers of varied experience levels. Who is it for? This book is ideal for Python developers who are keen to delve into the Apache Spark ecosystem. Whether you're just starting with big data or have some experience with Spark, this book provides practical recipes to enhance your skills. Readers looking to solve real-world data-intensive challenges using PySpark will find this resource invaluable.

Learning PySpark

"Learning PySpark" guides you through mastering the integration of Python with Apache Spark to build scalable and efficient data applications. You'll delve into Spark 2.0's architecture, efficiently process data, and explore PySpark's capabilities ranging from machine learning to structured streaming. By the end, you'll be equipped to craft and deploy robust data pipelines and applications. What this Book will help me do Master the Spark 2.0 architecture and its Python integration with PySpark. Leverage PySpark DataFrames and RDDs for effective data manipulation and analysis. Develop scalable machine learning models using PySpark's ML and MLlib libraries. Understand advanced PySpark features such as GraphFrames for graph processing and TensorFrames for deep learning models. Gain expertise in deploying PySpark applications locally and on the cloud for production-ready solutions. Author(s) Authors None Drabas and None Lee bring extensive experience in data engineering and Python programming. They combine a practical, example-driven approach with deep insights into Apache Spark's ecosystem. Their expertise and clarity in writing make this book accessible for individuals aiming to excel in big data technologies with Python. Who is it for? This book is best suited for Python developers who want to integrate Apache Spark 2.0 into their workflow to process large-scale data. Ideal readers will have foundational knowledge of Python and seek to build scalable data-intensive applications using Spark, regardless of prior experience with Spark itself.