This week we feature articles from Alex Hutter, Alexandre Bertails, Claire Wang, Haoyuan He, Kishore Banala, Peter Royal & Shervin Afshar, and Max Ganz II.

Additional reading comes from José Parra-Moyano, Patrick Reinmoeller & Karl Schmedders, Paolo Perrone, Umesh Bhatt, and Jim Clyde Monge.

News comes from Cloudflare, Grammarly & Superhuman, Syncro Soft, and RWS & Papercut.

Our summer schedule is quickly approaching. There will be one additional newsletter in July, and we’ll resume our regular schedule, such as it is, in September.

All previous issues are available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-advisor-index


Opinion / Analysis

Model once, represent everywhere: UDA (Unified Data Architecture) at Netflix

A team from Netflix generously describes how they are tackling their data integration challenges. The case study addresses issues that stymie many modern data management efforts. It is a bit technical, but easily worth the effort.

“This post introduces the foundations of UDA as a knowledge graph, connecting domain models to data containers through mappings, and grounded in an in-house metamodel, or model of models, called Upper. Upper defines the language for domain modeling in UDA and enables projections that automatically generate schemas and pipelines across systems.” (15 min)

https://netflixtechblog.com/uda-unified-data-architecture-6a6aee261d8d

The different flavors modern databases come in

The actual title of the paper is Introduction to the fundamentals of Amazon Redshift, by Max Ganz. I chose the title above because even if you have no interest in Redshift, you’ll likely want to read this piece. As Tim Bray says, it “has one of the best explanations I’ve ever read of the different flavors modern databases come in”. Long but easy read. (44 min)

https://www.redshift-observatory.ch/white_papers/downloads/introduction_to_the_fundamentals_of_amazon_redshift.html

More Reading

All Gilbane Advisor issues


Content technology news

Cloudflare blocks AI crawlers accessing content by default

Websites choose if they want AI crawlers to access their content, and decide how AI companies can use it – AI companies can state their crawlers purpose.
https://www.cloudflare.com/press-releases/2025/cloudflare-just-changed-how-ai-crawlers-scrape-the-internet-at-large/

Syncro Soft releases Oxygen AI Positron Assistant 6.0

The Oxygen AI Positron Service brings model updates, subscription management for teams, allowing centralized purchase or renewal, and requires AI Positron add-ons version 4 or newer.
https://www.oxygenxml.com/ai_positron/whats_new.html

Grammarly to acquire Superhuman

The acquisition accelerates Grammarly’s evolution into an AI productivity platform for apps and agents, positioning email as a critical communication surface.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/company/grammarly-to-acquire-superhuman/https://superhuman.com

RWS acquires Papercup’s IP

Papercup’s technology combines voice synthesis, unique AI voices and editorial tools for human language specialists to fine-tune the output.
https://www.rws.com/about/news/2025/rws-acquires-papercups-ip/https://www.papercup.com

All content technology news


The Gilbane Advisor is authored by Frank Gilbane and is ad-free, cost-free, and curated for content, computing, data, web, and digital experience technology and information professionals. We publish recommended articles and content technology news most Wednesdays. We do not sell or share personal data.

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