It’s not so bizarre if you realize that bringing ACID semantics to files, lets you use the scalability of file/blob storage like S3 combined with DB-like access.
Traditional RDBMSes just don’t scale so well as S3. But S3 didn’t have ACID semantics. Now it does!
You don't have access to the underlying data storage for Snowflake BigQuery, and Firebolt. You can import files into those, but the data will be duplicated.
If you have less than a terabyte of data, using one of those data warehouses is the smart move though.
But they also kind of lock you into that classic DB-like interface. Which works great for many people - hence their overwhelming popularity - but not necessarily everyone.
Comments
It’s not so bizarre if you realize that bringing ACID semantics to files, lets you use the scalability of file/blob storage like S3 combined with DB-like access.
Traditional RDBMSes just don’t scale so well as S3. But S3 didn’t have ACID semantics. Now it does!
Snowflake, BigQuery, Firebolt, even Trino, offer a more-classic-DB-like interface to files hosted on classic cloud storage.
You don't have access to the underlying data storage for Snowflake BigQuery, and Firebolt. You can import files into those, but the data will be duplicated.
If you have less than a terabyte of data, using one of those data warehouses is the smart move though.
But they also kind of lock you into that classic DB-like interface. Which works great for many people - hence their overwhelming popularity - but not necessarily everyone.