The modern data warehouse no longer tightly couples storage and compute. Instead, distinct but interconnected layers for storage, governance, and query processing give you the flexibility to choose the right tools for your workflows.
By adding open table formats and a high-performance query engine like ClickHouse to cloud object storage, you get database-grade capabilities — ACID transactions, schema enforcement, and fast analytical queries — without sacrificing the openness of your data lake. This combination brings performance together with interoperable, cost-effective storage to support your traditional analytics and modern AI/ML workloads.
What this architecture provides
By combining open object storage and table formats with ClickHouse as your query engine, you get:
| Benefit | Description |
|---|
| Consistent table updates | Atomic commits to table state mean concurrent writes don’t produce corrupt or partial data. This solves one of the biggest problems with raw data lakes. |
| Schema management | Enforced validation and tracked schema evolution prevent the “data swamp” problem where data becomes unusable due to schema inconsistencies. |
| Query performance | Indexing, statistics, and data layout optimizations like data skipping and clustering let SQL queries run at speeds comparable to a dedicated data warehouse. Combined with ClickHouse’s columnar engine, this holds true even on data stored in object storage. |
| Governance | Catalogs and table formats provide fine-grained access control and auditing at row and column levels, addressing the limited security controls in basic data lakes. |
| Separation of storage and compute | Storage and compute scale independently on commodity object storage, which is significantly cheaper than proprietary warehouse storage. While separation is standard in modern cloud warehouses, open formats let you choose which compute engine scales with your data. |
How ClickHouse powers your data warehouse
Data flows from streaming platforms and existing warehouses through object storage into ClickHouse, where it’s transformed, optimized, and served to your BI/AI tools.
Hybrid architecture: The best of both worlds
Beyond querying your data lake, you can ingest performance-critical data into ClickHouse’s native MergeTree storage for use cases that demand ultra-low latency — real-time dashboards, operational analytics, or interactive applications.
This gives you a tiered data strategy. Hot, frequently accessed data lives in ClickHouse’s optimized storage for sub-second query responses, while the complete data history stays in the lake and remains queryable. You can also use ClickHouse materialized views to continuously transform and aggregate lake data into optimized tables, bridging the two tiers automatically.
You choose where data lives based on performance requirements, not technical limitations.
Last modified on June 8, 2026
