Get started with Lakebase

This course introduces Databricks Lakebase, a fully managed PostgreSQL service built into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform that brings operational (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) workloads closer together.

The course begins with a conceptual lecture that compares OLTP and OLAP systems, explaining their different performance characteristics, storage models, and typical use cases. You will also explore the challenges organizations face when maintaining separate transactional databases and analytical platforms, including data movement, latency, and architectural complexity.

You will then learn how Databricks Lakebase helps address these challenges by providing a PostgreSQL-compatible operational database that integrates directly with the Databricks Lakehouse, enabling operational applications and analytics to work together within a unified platform.

This is a Get Started course, so the focus is on understanding the core concepts and basic workflows for working with Lakebase. Building full production applications on top of Lakebase is outside the scope of this course.