DuckDB is the best way to execute SQL on a single node. But with its embedding-friendly nature, it makes an excellent foundation for building distributed systems. George Fraser, CEO of Fivetran, will tell us how Fivetran used DuckDB to power its Iceberg data lake writer—coordinating thousands of small, parallel tasks across a fleet of workers, each running DuckDB queries on bounded datasets. The result is a high-throughput, dual-format (Iceberg + Delta) data lake architecture where every write scales linearly, snapshots stay perfectly in sync, and performance rivals a commercial database while remaining open and portable.

Let’s bring it back to where it all began—with you, the dbt community—and to where we’re going. We’ll share our perspective on how the two engines, dbt Core and Fusion, are united by one common framework—and how we continue to build in the open. Plus: recognition of our exceptional community contributors who make dbt so special. For our Coalesce Online attendees, join us on Slack in #coalesce-2025 to stay connected during keynote!

Let’s kick off Coalesce 2025 with a bang! At our opening keynote, you’ll hear how dbt is redefining data work in the age of AI. You’ll hear from dbt Labs CEO and Founder Tristan Handy for his perspective on how AI is rapidly pushing our industry forward and how the dbt Fusion engine is redefining the dbt standard. Tristan will also be joined by Fivetran CEO George Fraser as they discuss their shared vision of an open data infrastructure. dbt Labs product and technical leaders will also share the latest innovations in dbt including: how Fusion is making the development experience more efficient and intelligent than ever before, and our progress on embedded cost optimization and AI experiences designed to help our users expedite workflows while keeping costs and data quality in check. Throughout, dbt customers and partners will connect the dots between dbt’s vision and product roadmap with real-world customer outcomes. Get a front-row seat to the action. For our Coalesce Online attendees, join us on Slack in #coalesce-2025 to stay connected during keynote!

Generative AI's transformative power underscores the critical need for high-quality data. In this session, Barr Moses, CEO of Monte Carlo Data, Prukalpa Sankar, Cofounder at Atlan, and George Fraser, CEO at Fivetran, discuss the nuances of scaling data quality for generative AI applications, highlighting the unique challenges and considerations that come into play. Throughout the session, they share best practices for data and AI leaders to navigate these challenges, ensuring that governance remains a focal point even amid the AI hype cycle. Links Mentioned in the Show: Rewatch Session from RADAR: AI Edition New to DataCamp? Learn on the go using the DataCamp mobile app Empower your business with world-class data and AI skills with DataCamp for business

Day 1 Afternoon Keynote | Data + AI Summit 2022 Supercharging our data architecture at Coinbase using Databricks Lakehouse | Eric Sun | Keynote Partner Connect & Ecosystem Strategy | Zaheera Valani What are ELT and CDC, and why are all the cool kids doing it? |George Fraser Analytics without Compromise | Francois Ajenstat Fireside Chat with Zhamak Dehghani and Arsalan Tavakoli

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/

Data + AI Summit Keynotes from: Partner Connect & Ecosystem Strategy (Zaheera Valani) What are ELT and CDC, and why are all the cool kids doing it? (George Fraser) Analytics without Compromise (Francois Ajenstat)

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/

Summary The extract and load pattern of data replication is the most commonly needed process in data engineering workflows. Because of the myriad sources and destinations that are available, it is also among the most difficult tasks that we encounter. Fivetran is a platform that does the hard work for you and replicates information from your source systems into whichever data warehouse you use. In this episode CEO and co-founder George Fraser explains how it is built, how it got started, and the challenges that creep in at the edges when dealing with so many disparate systems that need to be made to work together. This is a great conversation to listen to for a better understanding of the challenges inherent in synchronizing your data.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management When you’re ready to build your next pipeline, or want to test out the projects you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so check out our friends at Linode. With 200Gbit private networking, scalable shared block storage, and a 40Gbit public network, you’ve got everything you need to run a fast, reliable, and bullet-proof data platform. If you need global distribution, they’ve got that covered too with world-wide datacenters including new ones in Toronto and Mumbai. And for your machine learning workloads, they just announced dedicated CPU instances. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/linode today to get a $20 credit and launch a new server in under a minute. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show! You listen to this show to learn and stay up to date with what’s happening in databases, streaming platforms, big data, and everything else you need to know about modern data management.For even more opportunities to meet, listen, and learn from your peers you don’t want to miss out on this year’s conference season. We have partnered with organizations such as O’Reilly Media, Dataversity, and Corinium Global Intelligence. Upcoming events include the O’Reilly AI Conference, the Strata Data Conference, and the combined events of the Data Architecture Summit and Graphorum. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/conferences to learn more and take advantage of our partner discounts when you register. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, read the show notes, and get in touch. To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers Join the community in the new Zulip chat workspace at dataengineeringpodcast.com/chat Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing George Fraser about FiveTran, a hosted platform for replicating your data from source to destination

Interview

Introduction How did you get involved in the area of data management? Can you start by describing the problem that Fivetran solves and the story of how it got started? Integration of multiple data sources (e.g. entity resolution) How is Fivetran architected and how has the overall system design changed since you first began working on it? monitoring and alerting Automated schema normalization. How does it work for customized data sources? Managing schema drift while avoiding data loss Change data capture What have you found to be the most complex or challenging data sources to work with reliably? Workflow for users getting started with Fivetran When is Fivetran the wrong choice for collecting and analyzing your data? What have you found to be the most challenging aspects of working in the space of data integrations?}} What have been the most interesting/unexpected/useful lessons that you have learned while building and growing Fivetran? What do you have planned for the future of Fivetran?

Contact Info

LinkedIn @frasergeorgew on Twitter

Parting Question

From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today?

Links