October 2026 - DataForGeeks

Is Spark Overkill for Most Pipelines? The Rise of DuckDB and Polars

October 22, 2026 by Nikhil Aggarwal

Spark’s fixed costs dominate small jobs. How DuckDB, Polars and Spark itself changed in 2026, with independent benchmarks, real AWS and Databricks prices, and where Spark is not overkill.

AI Agent Platform vs Data Platform: What Is Different, What Is Merging

October 14, 2026October 13, 2026 by Nikhil Aggarwal

Headline "AI agent platform vs data platform" on an orange-to-crimson gradient with a grid labelled Data engine, a loop labelled Agent engine and a Shared control plane bar

A data platform is built so nothing surprising happens. An agent platform is built so surprising things can happen safely. Six differences, a tested one-run-versus-1,000-runs simulation, five places the two are merging, and what is GA and open source at Microsoft.