Data Contracts

Chapter 5. The Data Contract Components: Data Assets and Contract Definition

In Chapters 1 to 5 we discuss data contracts from a theoretical perspective, and in Chapter 6 we will shift into actually applying data contracts with a real-world project. Specifically, in Chapters 6 and 7 we will provide the components of data contracts and our preferred open source tools needed to implement them. In Chapter 8 we will build on Chapters 6 and 7 with a guided project tying these open source components together to create the architecture for data contracts. We highly encourage you to reference our public GitHub repository that complements these chapters and walks you through the technical implementation.

Let’s start with our overview of the components of data contracts.

Overview of Components

What makes data contracts powerful is what also makes them challenging to get adopted beyond the data team. The power of data contracts is that they’re designed to unite teams and disciplines across an entire company, while also integrating seamlessly into the individual tools and workflows at all stages of the data lifecycle. Thus, data contract architecture requires using a toolbox of infrastructure, in which components can be broken up into four main categories and their respective subcategories, as illustrated in Figure 5-1.

Note

In this chapter we will only cover data assets and contract definition in depth, but we will provide a high-level overview of all components so it’s clear how they all ...