Building Data Products

Chapter 1. Beyond Data Contracts

A Note for Early Release Readers

With Early Release ebooks, you get books in their earliest form—the author’s raw and unedited content as they write—so you can take advantage of these technologies long before the official release of these titles.

This will be the 1st chapter of the final book. Please note that the GitHub repo will be made active later on.

If you’d like to be actively involved in reviewing and commenting on this draft, please reach out to the editor at [e-mail].

Data contracts, artifacts, ports, SBOMs: if your head is already spinning, don’t worry. This chapter is about setting the stage, not drowning you in acronyms and concepts. Before we can build, automate, or measure, we need to agree on the basics: what a data product is, why it matters, and how the vocabulary around it gives us common ground. Without this foundation, we’re just yelling “data!” at each other in different dialects.

Think of a data contract like the menu at your favorite restaurant: it sets clear expectations between chef and customer. Without it, your data product is just a mystery plate you’ll get from your waiter.

Data Products

Data products are revolutionizing data management—ushering in a new era of reusable, standardized, and value-driven assets. Whether you’re a data engineer, architect, or product owner, ignoring this shift is like parking on the shoulder of the road while the rest of the industry speeds down the data highway.

Let’s start ...