AppliedAIPrep logoAppliedAI/Prep
🗄️ Data & SQL Engineering
Core

Incremental Models and MERGE/UPSERT

Incremental models process only new or changed rows instead of rebuilding a table from scratch, using a high-watermark to select the delta and a MERGE/UPSERT to apply it. The hard parts are late-arriving data, idempotent re-runs, and choosing a watermark that does not silently drop rows. Applied-AI interviews probe it because full refreshes do not scale, and a subtly wrong incremental quietly loses or double-counts data.

a free account unlocks the core curriculum tier · no card
RELATED CONCEPTS
PRACTICE THIS IN REAL QUESTIONS
COMPANIES THAT ASSUME THIS
NEXT IN DATA & SQL ENGINEERINGBatch vs Streaming