Generative AI Engineering with Databricks

This course covers performance optimization, cost control, and security for large-scale data warehousing deployments.This course is designed for Data Warehousing practitioners responsible for managing Databricks environments serving hundreds or thousands of users across multiple business units. You will gain the skills necessary to efficiently scale data warehousing operations while maintaining high performance, cost-effectiveness, and compliance with security standards.

Note: Databricks Academy is transitioning to a notebook-based format for classroom sessions within the Databricks environment, discontinuing the use of slide decks for lectures. You can access the lecture notebooks in the Vocareum lab environment.

This course teaches how to build production-ready ETL pipelines using pure SQL on the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. Students learn Streaming Tables with Auto Loader for incremental ingestion, Materialized Views with incremental refresh for Silver-to-Gold transformations, AUTO CDC (FLOW AUTO CDC) for declarative SCD Type 1 and Type 2 dimension management, and Lakeflow Jobs with SQL File tasks for production orchestration. The course follows a realistic retail dataset through the medallion architecture (Bronze → Silver → Gold).

Note: Databricks Academy is transitioning to a notebook-based format for classroom sessions within the Databricks environment, discontinuing the use of slide decks for lectures. You can access the lecture notebooks in the Vocareum lab environment.

This is an introductory course that serves as an appropriate entry point to learn Data Engineering with Databricks. 

Below, we describe each of the four, four-hour modules included in this course.

1. Data Ingestion with Lakeflow Connect

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to Lakeflow Connect as a scalable and simplified solution for ingesting data into Databricks from a variety of data sources. You will begin by exploring the different types of connectors within Lakeflow Connect (Standard and Managed), learn about various ingestion techniques, including batch, incremental batch, and streaming, and then review the key benefits of Delta tables and the Medallion architecture.

From there, you will gain practical skills to efficiently ingest data from cloud object storage using Lakeflow Connect Standard Connectors with methods such as CREATE TABLE AS (CTAS), COPY INTO, and Auto Loader, along with the benefits and considerations of each approach. You will then learn how to append metadata columns to your bronze level tables during ingestion into the Databricks data intelligence platform. This is followed by working with the rescued data column, which handles records that don’t match the schema of your bronze table, including strategies for managing this rescued data.

The course also introduces techniques for ingesting and flattening semi-structured JSON data, as well as enterprise-grade data ingestion using Lakeflow Connect Managed Connectors.

Finally, learners will explore alternative ingestion strategies, including MERGE INTO operations and leveraging the Databricks Marketplace, equipping you with foundational knowledge to support modern data engineering ingestion. 

2. Deploy Workloads with Lakeflow Jobs

Deploy Workloads with Lakeflow Jobs course teaches how to orchestrate and automate data, analytics, and AI workflows using Lakeflow Jobs. You will learn to make robust, production-ready pipelines with flexible scheduling, advanced orchestration, and best practices for reliability and efficiency-all natively integrated within the Databricks Data intelligence Platform. Prior experience with Databricks, Python and SQL is recommended.

3. Build Data Pipelines with Lakeflow Spark Declarative Pipelines 

This course introduces users to the essential concepts and skills needed to build data pipelines using Lakeflow Spark Declarative Pipelines (SDP) in Databricks for incremental batch or streaming ingestion and processing through multiple streaming tables and materialized views. Designed for data engineers new to Spark Declarative Pipelines, the course provides a comprehensive overview of core components such as incremental data processing, streaming tables, materialized views, and temporary views, highlighting their specific purposes and differences.

Topics covered include:

- Developing and debugging ETL pipelines with the multi-file editor in Spark Declarative Pipelines using SQL (with Python code examples provided)

- How Spark Declarative Pipelines track data dependencies in a pipeline through the pipeline graph

- Configuring pipeline compute resources, data assets, trigger modes, and other advanced options

Next, the course introduces data quality expectations in Spark Declarative Pipelines, guiding users through the process of integrating expectations into pipelines to validate and enforce data integrity. Learners will then explore how to put a pipeline into production, including scheduling options, and enabling pipeline event logging to monitor pipeline performance and health.

Finally, the course covers how to implement Change Data Capture (CDC) using the AUTO CDC INTO syntax within Spark Declarative Pipelines to manage slowly changing dimensions (SCD Type 1 and Type 2), preparing users to integrate CDC into their own pipelines.

4. DevOps Essentials for Data Engineering

This course explores software engineering best practices and DevOps principles, specifically designed for data engineers working with Databricks. Participants will build a strong foundation in key topics such as code quality, version control, documentation, and testing. The course emphasizes DevOps, covering core components, benefits, and the role of continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) in optimizing data engineering workflows.

You will learn how to apply modularity principles in PySpark to create reusable components and structure code efficiently. Hands-on experience includes designing and implementing unit tests for PySpark functions using the pytest framework, followed by integration testing for Databricks data pipelines with DLT and Workflows to ensure reliability.

The course also covers essential Git operations within Databricks, including using Databricks Git Folders to integrate continuous integration practices. Finally, you will take a high level look at various deployment methods for Databricks assets, such as REST API, CLI, SDK, and Declarative Automation Bundles (DABs), providing you with the knowledge of techniques to deploy and manage your pipelines.

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