Technical writing
The data warehouse in your own data center
Articles on cost models, data sovereignty, table formats and connecting AI agents. Technical, sourced, without the sales pitch.
Why cloud warehouses get expensive as soon as they succeed
A cloud warehouse does not get expensive because it runs badly. It gets expensive because it runs well and people start using it.
by Daniel Alisch
MCP in the data warehouse: agents need a semantic layer, not SQL
Why an MCP server that only offers run_sql is the wrong interface to a warehouse — and how a semantic layer brings permissions, auditing and correct figures together.
Nils Gregersen · Aug 12, 2026 · 4 min
Calculating TCO honestly: what an on-premises warehouse really costs
Hardware is the smaller part. What TCO comparisons for on-premises regularly leave out — staff, power, spare capacity — and how to put numbers on it.
Daniel Alisch · Aug 5, 2026 · 3 min
Apache Iceberg on your own hardware: what the table format actually solves
Iceberg is often mistaken for a file format. What it really provides — ACID, time travel, schema evolution — and where the catalog becomes the real dependency.
Nils Gregersen · Jul 29, 2026 · 3 min
Separating storage and compute without the cloud: what it takes
Separating storage from compute is not a cloud invention. What you need on your own hardware — and where elasticity really ends.
Nils Gregersen · Jul 15, 2026 · 3 min
Data sovereignty is not a contract problem, it is a location problem
Why a data center in Frankfurt does not prevent access by US authorities — Article 48 GDPR, the CLOUD Act, and what the Bitkom Cloud Report 2026 shows.
Daniel Alisch · Jul 8, 2026 · 3 min
Warehouse migration: what actually takes the time
Moving tables is easy. What costs time is roles, stored logic, time zones and reconciling against the old figures. A realistic look at four weeks.
Nils Gregersen · Jun 24, 2026 · 3 min
Why data projects in regulated industries fail at sign-off
It is not technology that keeps modern warehouses out of hospitals, banks and public bodies, but the burden of proof. What auditors actually want to see.
Daniel Alisch · Jun 17, 2026 · 3 min
Text-to-SQL does not fail on the model, it fails on the metrics
Why better language models barely improve text-to-SQL accuracy — and which groundwork in the warehouse actually makes the difference.
Nils Gregersen · Jun 3, 2026 · 3 min
FinOps is a symptom, not a solution
That companies need a dedicated discipline to manage cloud spend is remarkable. What FinOps achieves — and what it reveals about the billing model.
Daniel Alisch · May 20, 2026 · 3 min