rmoff's random ramblings

Interesting links - April 2026

by · Interesting Links at https://preview.rmoff.net/2026/04/30/interesting-links-april-2026/

Table of Contents
Interesting Links

A bit of a streamlined edition, this month. Lots of interesting links still, but less commentary. You can put that down to me prevaricating on getting my previous blog about Materialized Tables in Apache Flink finished, and leaving myself little time to work on this one :) Not including the detailed narration actually knocks a bunch of time off the preparation—I’d be interested in your feedback as to how much the absence of narration impacts (if at all) your enjoyment of reading it. Let me know in the comments below!

Something that I’m slowly changing is how I categorise links to do with AI. A few months back anything "AI" got its own section. It wasn’t much more than a novelty really; certainly not something worth distracting the regular link sections with. But now AI is just part-and-parcel of many people’s workflows, a regular component in their toolbox. So where an article is about credibly using AI as part of an existing topic (such as data engineering), I’ll file it in that section. (And if this news makes you cross because you abhor anything AI, well, I’ve got news for you).

Current London 2026 - wanna free ticket? 🎟️ 🔗

If you’re in the UK and interested in Kafka, Flink, Iceberg, etc etc (which, since you’re reading this blog post, I assume you at least have a passing interest in) then you might be interested in Current London in May—and I have a free ticket code for you to use! Register with code L-CMP-LDNKafka and it’s all yours :)

  • 🔥 Not got time for all this? I’ve marked my top reads of the month :)

  • 📧 Want to receive this monthly round-up as an email? Subscribe to my Substack where I cross-post the same content

  • 🔗 Medium posts often skulk behind a gate, so I’ve hyperlinked to the Freedium version. You’ll see [Medium ↗] next to each link if you prefer the original.

Analytics 🔗

Data Platforms, Architectures, and Modelling 🔗

Data Engineering, Pipelines, and CDC 🔗

Kafka and Event Streaming 🔗

Flink 🔗

Open Table Formats (OTF), Catalogs, Lakehouses etc. 🔗

RDBMS 🔗

General Data Stuff 🔗

AI 🔗

I warned you previously…this AI stuff is here to stay, and it’d be short-sighted to think otherwise. As I read and learn more about it, I’m going to share interesting links (the clue is in the blog post title) that I find—whilst trying to avoid the breathless hype and slop.

And finally… 🔗

Nothing to do with data, but stuff that I’ve found interesting or has made me smile.

Tool 🔗

Watch/Listen 🔗

Nerd 🔗