https://community.databricks.com/t5/data-engineering/igrating-from-cron-based-airflow-to-lakeflow-s-data-aware/m-p/168434#M55920 <P>Hi everyone,</P><P>We are in the process of migrating our legacy Airflow DAGs (largely time-based cron schedules) to&nbsp;Lakeflow Jobs, and I want to fully leverage the platform's event-driven capabilities rather than just replicating the old "timer-based" pattern.</P><P>A few questions for those further along in this migration:</P><OL><LI>How are you using&nbsp;File Arrival Triggers&nbsp;and&nbsp;Table Update Triggers&nbsp;to avoid running compute against empty or unchanged sources? Have you seen a measurable DBU savings from this switch?</LI><LI>For cross-workspace dependencies (Job A in Workspace 1 needs to complete before Job B in Workspace 2 starts), are you using a "Signal Table" pattern in Unity Catalog, or is there a more native way to handle this in Lakeflow?</LI><LI>How do you handle&nbsp;"fan-out" dependencies—i.e., one upstream table update needs to trigger 5-6 downstream jobs owned by different teams? Are you managing this centrally, or letting each team own their own trigger subscription?</LI></OL><P>Would love to hear the "messy" lessons learned, not just the documented happy path.</P> Sat, 12 Sep 2026 18:34:56 GMT Khasim_1 2026-09-12T18:34:56Z https://community.databricks.com/t5/data-engineering/igrating-from-cron-based-airflow-to-lakeflow-s-data-aware/m-p/168434#M55920 <P>Hi everyone,</P><P>We are in the process of migrating our legacy Airflow DAGs (largely time-based cron schedules) to&nbsp;Lakeflow Jobs, and I want to fully leverage the platform's event-driven capabilities rather than just replicating the old "timer-based" pattern.</P><P>A few questions for those further along in this migration:</P><OL><LI>How are you using&nbsp;File Arrival Triggers&nbsp;and&nbsp;Table Update Triggers&nbsp;to avoid running compute against empty or unchanged sources? Have you seen a measurable DBU savings from this switch?</LI><LI>For cross-workspace dependencies (Job A in Workspace 1 needs to complete before Job B in Workspace 2 starts), are you using a "Signal Table" pattern in Unity Catalog, or is there a more native way to handle this in Lakeflow?</LI><LI>How do you handle&nbsp;"fan-out" dependencies—i.e., one upstream table update needs to trigger 5-6 downstream jobs owned by different teams? Are you managing this centrally, or letting each team own their own trigger subscription?</LI></OL><P>Would love to hear the "messy" lessons learned, not just the documented happy path.</P> Sat, 12 Sep 2026 18:34:56 GMT https://community.databricks.com/t5/data-engineering/igrating-from-cron-based-airflow-to-lakeflow-s-data-aware/m-p/168434#M55920 Khasim_1 2026-09-12T18:34:56Z