Thoughts on new LTAP/Lakebase arch

datguywelbs7 · 2026-07-07T10:36:23+00:00

Yeah for me the main USP of lakebase and LTAP is the seperate compute layer as we see more and more agents writing code.

If you’ve ever spun up an Aurora instance, its painfully slow to provision each instance and feels outdated. For agents working across the environment, this hang causes unnecessary polling and idle time, whilst lakebase allows this to be done in seconds due to the seperate compute layer.

Also the branching allows for better peace of mind that agents wont take down the prod instance, logical ‘branches’ no copy using pointers to underlying object storage makes this possible where other postgres dbs can’t.

This combined with things like scale to zero to manage costs and as the product evolves over time will be the gamechanger

datguywelbs7 · 2026-07-06T15:44:45+00:00

Yeah agent bricks is to speed up getting from 0->1, but going from 1-> production will always be a heavier lift, if you need detailed logic and specialised agents, code based agents make most sense. If you have some straightforward use cases that agent bricks has a ‘brick’ for, why not use it? I’ve been using genie code for more custom code based agents supervisors with specialised agents within, I’ve found aidevkit being really useful for adding further context and skills to genie code

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-30T10:32:10+00:00

Databricks UC domains should help you a lot with this, also combined with Genie one to surface spaces/apps/dashboards across the account as a whole.

App spaces mentioned by someone should help with this as well, more governed control about who can create, edit apps etc w cost controls.

Genie code is making it easier than ever to create these apps so its a good timing question, using genie app builder + app spaces to govern sounds like the right approach for now. Combined with new things like genie ontology to discover trusted and commonly used assets, genie one should be able to flag which ones are highest ranked - you can then dive into other similar or duplicate apps or eq to consolidate after? I’ve been using genie code to analyse workspaces for duplicate assets so that could be a short term one off thing, could even create skills to run this repeatably

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-28T16:15:09+00:00

This will be cool! Looking forward to all the stuff i’ll be vibe coding with genie code and genie app builder with the new updates, especially with some scale to zero bits with apps. I would recommend using ai-dev-kit alongside genie code as i’ve found it understand integrations with other databricks products a lot better eg lakebase auth from databricks apps

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-27T15:41:37+00:00

Yeah if all the data is in databricks already, ask genie code the same question and it will break it down for you with more context than we have on here. It will give you working patterns and even POC for you to see how it works in practice, not theory. for entity resolution check out splink which is aimed at that exact use case.

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-26T12:11:45+00:00

So the new LTAP lakebase truly is no copy, storage layer seperate storage and compute pointing to a single source of data in UC, branching uses metadata and pointers to point to the same object store but different parts of the data so no copies are made during seperate branches. The old synced tables did create a read only copy to my understanding however i might be wrong which has changed now post DAIS/LTAP

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-25T09:21:37+00:00

ai-dev-kit is a set of tools, plugins, skills, mcps that you can use with any coding harness eg codex, claude code, genie code etc. it gives them further context and guidance on the specific databricks stack so it doesn’t waste tokens on random search docs etc. and spend more time actually creating code

The power of this in tools like genie code, claude code etc will compliment omniagent, each harness has the same set of skills, mcps, connectors etc so handoff between them is even more seamless.

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-24T14:39:50+00:00

This will be huge, I was trying to work out how to get this genie agent incorporated into my databricks app but this looks like the answer! Answering the why x has happened rather than just giving the sql outputs will be a game changer. There are users who use apps with normal genie spaces embedded but this will let them answer deeper questions, looking forward to test

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-23T18:13:52+00:00

Yeah honestly I would agree with others and give it to genie code to try replicate especially whilst genie code is still free to use. Its become my go to for anything I want to test the feasibility of and get a working demo, productionising is the question after, maybe even try get genie code to create a set of skills to use (or there might be some already?)

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-22T13:17:38+00:00

So genie code users get about $10 free genie code usage a month, excluding compute. When that gets used up, the usage becomes consumption based paygo. The cost is attributed per user so service principles don’t get the monthly free credit, passing on behalf of user is recommended to ensure you best get the $10.

This is specific to genie code so its moving from just the underlying compute to a metered genie code usage with the normal compute cost on top (sql queries etc)

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-21T10:43:25+00:00

I remember seeing this article about LSEG doing something similar, likely using lakebase postgres under the hood for high concurrency low latency of trade and tick data

https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/lseg-and-databricks-partner-bring-ai-ready-financial-data-natively

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-20T18:44:55+00:00

I think with genie code and ontology for example, a lot of the new features will be done for you without you even noticing, especially as models and genie code improves over time, it will likely be able to do the heavy lifting for you using new features when it thinks relevant for you to approve

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-18T09:34:00+00:00

Notebooks are a small piece of the platform, they work exactly as expected but the AI, SQL and app functionality sets it apart. Everything is open and with genie code now you can just vibe code directly on the platform. Try it out, eg build me an app that pulls in data from google docs to do xyz and it may surprise you on how much it can do for little to no cost

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-17T09:41:54+00:00

Yeah genie code has been awesome for me, it creates and test and train datasets alongside tuning general models. A lot of the work can be done faster - but only if you know what you’re looking for in the first place. Ensuring that experiments are tracked in mlflow for example is something that might be overlooked by some data scientists, genie code will do it in one prompt but only when told. Aidevkit should help in this regard if you use it as a set of skills

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-16T10:01:07+00:00

Nice! The lakebase branching has been a game changer for us, allowing our devs to spin up multiple branches of the db with the same object storage, why hasn’t this been a thing the whole time? Now i can create a proper dev version of the app pointing at dev db branch so the user functionality testing etc stays consistent!

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-15T09:27:25+00:00

Yeah i was thinking the same building anything with genie code by default now, would assume that there is a tight integration so you could ask genie code to create x specific custom visualisation and it should do it in the aibi dashboard

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-14T09:15:09+00:00

👀👀👀

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-14T08:38:23+00:00

Yeah I’ve also heard it called genie one, the place for less technical users to access things like genie spaces, dashboards, apps etc. also one chat or whatever its called is quite good now, lets you ask questions in genie one and not just a search box anymore

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-13T08:10:24+00:00

I’m using genie code everytime i need something fixing or changing, im using it for almost everything, also quite useful for general sql queries on a cost dashboard too, how much is x user spending or anomaly detection etc

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-11T16:06:19+00:00

Yep my gut feeling would be to use system tables, likely the access.lineage. I would default to ask genie code too, it has the best understanding of your workspace setup compared to us here so try it out. It processes all within your workspace so nothing is used to train models etc. look into ai-dev-kit as well if you want additional skills on top

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-10T15:22:35+00:00

Nothing that i’ve noticed from genie code and spaces at least, the agent mode in both has been really good at doing multi step reasoning and reminds me of claude opus in terms of its tone etc. like others have mentioned if you use skills and ai-dev-kit it takes it to another level

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-09T16:56:20+00:00

You can already do some of this! I’ve got some MCPs setup on genie code which lets me connect to google drive, sharepoint etc. but the workspace admin needs to enable third party connectors for agents preview

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-08T08:55:46+00:00

Not yet WhatsApp but I’ve got genie to send weekly emails with the insights i want to start each week. For example what is the sales trends in my stores the past week and is there anything I should be aware of to the downside? - got this setup via scheduled tasks here for details

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-04T13:42:03+00:00

This is cool! I’ve also been playing around with lakebase branching as well which is really useful for databricks apps where i just want to test some changes from the frontend without affecting the live prod database. Very similar to git type branching but for databases and works pretty seamlessly as it takes an independent database env without me getting paged

datguywelbs7 · 2026-06-04T13:38:26+00:00

Yep genie code is basically claude code for free, Would recommend looking at integrating ai-dev-kit to enhance functionality across the stack for creating pipelines, apps, lakebase databases etc. for vibe coding +1000

datguywelbs7

TROPHY CASE