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What is the difference between a data warehouse, data lake and database?
A database stores data for running an application, a data warehouse stores cleaned, structured data for analysis, and a data lake stores raw files of any type cheaply. Small companies usually need only a warehouse, sometimes with a raw landing area alongside it.
Database: optimised for fast reads and writes of individual records, such as an order system.
Data warehouse: optimised for analytical queries across many rows, with data organised for reporting.
Data lake: file storage for raw, semi-structured or unstructured data, such as logs, documents or JSON dumps.
Modern cloud warehouses can also hold raw loaded data in separate schemas, so one platform often serves both purposes. Choose based on your needs rather than buzzwords.
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