Learning Domain-Driven Design

Chapter 16. Data Mesh

So far in this book, we have discussed models used to build operational systems. Operational systems implement real-time transactions that manipulate the system’s data and orchestrate its day-to-day interactions with its environment. These models are the online transactional processing (OLTP) data. Another type of data that deserves attention and proper modeling is online analytical processing (OLAP) data.

In this chapter, you will learn about the analytical data management architecture called data mesh. You will see how the data mesh–based architecture works and how it differs from the more traditional OLAP data management approaches. Ultimately, you will see how domain-driven design and data mesh accommodate each other. But first, let’s see what these analytical data models are and why we can’t just reuse the operational models for analytical use cases.

Analytical Data Model Versus Transactional Data Model

They say knowledge is power. Analytical data is the knowledge that gives companies the power to leverage accumulated data to gain insights into how to optimize the business, better understand customers’ needs, and even make automated decisions by training machine learning (ML) models.

The analytical models (OLAP) and operational models (OLTP) serve different types of consumers, enable the implementation of different kinds of use cases, and are therefore designed following other design principles.

Operational models are built around the various entities ...