--- title: The Medallion Architecture: Bronze, Silver, and Gold on... description: The medallion architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold) is a data layering convention for progressive refinement in lakehouses — not a Databricks-exclusive feature.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-medallion-architecture-bronze-silver-and-gold-on-open-lakehouses-o8umxrv5u twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Medallion Architecture: Bronze, Silver, and Gold on Open Lakehouses | daily.dev og:description: The medallion architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold) is a data layering convention for progressive refinement in lakehouses — not a Databricks-exclusive feature.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-medallion-architecture-bronze-silver-and-gold-on-open-lakehouses-o8umxrv5u og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/o8uMxRV5U.png og:image:alt: The Medallion Architecture: Bronze, Silver, and Gold on Open Lakehouses og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Medallion Architecture: Bronze, Silver, and Gold on Open Lakehouses **[BigData Boutique blog](https://daily.dev/sources/bigdataboutique)** · 8 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary The medallion architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold) is a data layering convention for progressive refinement in lakehouses — not a Databricks-exclusive feature. All three tiers map cleanly onto open table formats: Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, and Apache Hudi. Bronze serves as an append-only raw landing zone for replay and audit; Silver handles deduplication, upserts, and SCD logic via MERGE INTO; Gold delivers business-ready aggregates optimized for reads. Key trade-offs include copy-on-write vs. merge-on-read for update-heavy Silver tables, and mandatory table maintenance (compaction, snapshot expiry) at Bronze and Silver. The post also critically examines when to skip Bronze entirely — it's only worth keeping if you genuinely need an immutable replay point — and warns against reflexively applying three layers to every dataset. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Medallion Data Architecture: An Introduction](https://daily.dev/posts/the-medallion-data-architecture-an-introduction-hyoacccg8) · Towards Data Science · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Materialized Lake Views in Microsoft Fabric: When Your Medallion Fits in a SELECT Statement](https://daily.dev/posts/materialized-lake-views-in-microsoft-fabric-when-your-medallion-fits-in-a-select-statement-ggimppmdc) · Towards Data Science · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#data-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/data-engineering), [#apache-iceberg](https://daily.dev/tags/apache-iceberg) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-medallion-architecture-bronze-silver-and-gold-on-open-lakehouses-o8umxrv5u) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Medallion Architecture: Bronze, Silver, and Gold on Open Lakehouses","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-medallion-architecture-bronze-silver-and-gold-on-open-lakehouses-o8umxrv5u","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-medallion-architecture-bronze-silver-and-gold-on-open-lakehouses-o8umxrv5u"},"datePublished":"2026-06-07T10:00:46.602Z","dateModified":"2026-06-08T06:19:40.289Z","description":"The medallion architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold) is a data layering convention for progressive refinement in lakehouses — not a Databricks-exclusive feature....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/5defcbd21248444ad76e4908c24ddc53?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/5defcbd21248444ad76e4908c24ddc53?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"BigData Boutique blog","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"BigData Boutique blog","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--3BDyon-q--/f_auto/v1717941801/logos/bigdataboutique","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/bigdataboutique"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-medallion-architecture-bronze-silver-and-gold-on-open-lakehouses-o8umxrv5u","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"data-engineering,apache-iceberg","timeRequired":"PT8M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"BigData Boutique blog","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/bigdataboutique"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The Medallion Architecture: Bronze, Silver, and Gold on Open Lakehouses"}]} ```