Alex Merced Tutorialshandbook

682 tutorials · free to read

A working handbook for data and software engineering.

Hands-on tutorials by Alex Merced on Apache Iceberg, the data lakehouse, pipelines, agentic AI, and the languages and tools that hold it all together.

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  1. 01Guardrails for Analytics Agents That Do More Than Answer QuestionsThe risk isn't agents going rogue, it's agents acting correctly on bad input at machine speed. Here's how to classify actions by consequence, gate capability, and design approval steps people actually use.AI & AgentsJul 28, 2026
  2. 02Building Agent Telemetry Tables in Iceberg That Survive an AuditA practical guide to building agent decision traces in Apache Iceberg that support audit reconstruction, governance review, and cost attribution across sessions.AI & AgentsJul 28, 2026
  3. 03What Agentic Analytics Actually Costs, and How to Keep It BoundedAgent analytics generates two cost streams that scale on different variables. Here's the arithmetic, the levers that actually move the number, and how to build attribution before you need it.AI & AgentsJul 28, 2026
  4. 04Running an Apache Iceberg Lakehouse With No Internet ConnectionA practical guide to deploying an Iceberg lakehouse in air-gapped environments: component choices, artifact pipelines, identity without a cloud, and the operational realities that surprise teams.Apache IcebergJul 28, 2026
  5. 05When the Query Optimizer Starts Managing Its Own MaterializationsAutonomous materialized view management replaces quarterly review meetings with workload-driven scoring, and it's essential when AI agents generate unpredictable query patterns.Apache IcebergJul 28, 2026
  6. 06Why AI Agents Fail on Raw Data, and What to Give Them InsteadAgents fail on raw lake data because business rules live in people's heads. Data products with semantic contracts fix this at the source.Data EngineeringJul 28, 2026