Data Management at Scale, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7. Connecting the Dots

It’s time for a short intermezzo. The previous three chapters were long, dense reads. You learned about data distribution and integration patterns for connecting applications. We went deep into the rabbit hole and discussed various patterns and considerations for managing different architectures. You also learned about taking a more unified or holistic approach for managing both data and integration.

Now, I’ll connect the dots and discuss managing your architecture as a whole, beginning with a quick recap of cross-domain interoperability, data distribution, and application integration. From there, we’ll hop between different subjects: the criteria to evaluate when choosing one integration pattern over another, what combinations you can make, and what works best in certain scenarios. You’ll see that there’s great overlap in best practices for documentation, design, governance, metadata management, security, and the like. Next, we’ll shift gears and explore how to inspire, motivate, and guide for change. We’ll start with how to correctly manage cross-domain boundaries, discussing a concrete solution design. Then we’ll look at how to strive for discovery and semantic consistency, and how to properly guide your teams in such an architectural transition. Finally, we’ll examine organizational transformation: how domain teams and platform teams should interact and what lessons you can learn from that. By the end of this chapter, you should have a solid ...