Most semantic layer tools sit atop your existing warehouse, pushing down SQL to leverage its compute. Integration involves configuring connections and mapping schemas.

In lakehouse architectures, the semantic layer may query data stored in files like Parquet using engines such as DuckDB or Spark.

Some platforms also support streaming or real‑time databases.

The key is ensuring that the semantic layer can access metadata and that permission models align.

MageMetrics connects to popular warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks) and can read from data lakes, providing cross-source joins through its semantic graph.