HomeInterview QuestionsData Lake, Data Warehouse, Redshift

What is the major difference between a data lake and a data warehouse?

🟢 Easy Conceptual Fresher level
1 Times asked
May 2026 Last seen
May 2026 First seen

💡 Model Answer

A data lake stores raw, unstructured or semi‑structured data in its native format (e.g., CSV, JSON, Parquet) and is optimized for storage cost and flexibility. A data warehouse, such as Amazon Redshift, stores structured, curated data in a columnar format optimized for fast analytical queries. The key difference is that a lake is a repository for all data, while a warehouse is a curated subset designed for reporting and BI. Lakes allow schema‑on‑read, whereas warehouses enforce schema‑on‑write.

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