Deciphering Data Architectures

Chapter 11. Data Fabric

The data fabric architecture is an evolution of the modern data warehouse (MDW) architecture: an advanced layer built onto the MDW to enhance data accessibility, security, discoverability, and availability. Picture the data fabric weaving its way throughout your entire company, accumulating all of the data and providing it to everyone who needs it, within your company or even outside it. It’s an architecture that can consume data no matter the size, speed, or type. The most important aspect of the data fabric philosophy is that a data fabric solution can consume any and all data within the organization.

That is my definition of a data fabric; others in the industry define it differently. Some even use the term interchangeably with modern data warehouse! For instance, the consulting firm Gartner starts with a similar definition, writing that the data fabric is

a design concept that serves as an integrated layer (fabric) of data and connecting processes. A data fabric utilizes continuous analytics over existing, discoverable and inferenced metadata assets to support the design, deployment and utilization of integrated and reusable data across all environments, including hybrid and multi-cloud platforms.

Where Gartner’s view diverges from mine is in the view that data virtualization (which you learned about in Chapter 6) is a major piece of the data fabric technology that reduces the need to move or copy data from siloed systems. Gartner envisions an “intelligent ...