Data Mesh Governance / Policies / Definitions

Data Contract

Category: Definitions
Status: Proposed

Context

What do we mean when we say a data contract?

Decision

A data contract is a formal agreement between two parties (data product provider and data product consumer). It specifies the guarantees about a provided data set and expectations concerning data product access.

It covers:

• Data product name
• Data product provider
  • Data product owner contact details
• Data product consumer
  • Responsible consumer contact details
• Purpose
• Output port
  • Technology (files, tables, topics)
  • Format (Parquet, Delta, JSON, …)
  • Global address
• Schema
  • Field names and types
  • Primary and foreign keys
  • Partitions
• Service-level objectives
  • Interval of change
  • Latency
  • Completeness
  • Freshness
  • Availability
  • Performance
  • Data volume
• Terms
  • Allowed usage and access patterns
  • Query frequency
• Security
  • The IAM role definition to grant
• Costs and Billing
• Contract duration
  • Start date
  • Notice period and end date
  • Next reassessment date

Example

Name	Value
Data Product Provider	Domain Team: Checkout Data Product: Webshop Orders Data Product Owner: Nicky Cree (nicky.cree@example.com) Output Port: bigquery_orders_latest_npii_v1
Data Product Consumer	Domain Team: Controlling Responsible contact: Aubrey Harlow (aubrey.harlow@example.com)
Purpose	Build a demand forecasting model
Schema	https://example.com/checkout/webshop-orders/bigquery_orders_latest_npii_v1/schema.yaml
Service-level objectives	Interval of change: Continuous streaming Latency: < 60 seconds Completeness: All orders since 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Freshness: Near real time, max. 60 seconds delay Availability: 99.9% Performance: Query all orders of last 12 months < 30 seconds Data volume: 5,000-10,000 orders per day expected, ~50 KiB / order
Terms	Max queries per minute: 10 Max data processing per day: 1 TiB Pub/Sub subscriptions
Security	IAM service-account: serviceAccount:controlling-data-consumer@example-prod-data.iam.gserviceaccount.com
Costs and Billing	Implementation and operational costs are covered by the checkout domain until 2023-12-31.
Start date	2023-04-01
End date
Notice Period	3 months
Next reassessment date	2024-04-01

Consequences

• A data contract gives clear expectations and requirements for building the data product
• The contract must be fulfilled, but the internal implementation can change
• The data product can be extended as long as it is backward compatible with the contract
• A defined purpose is a motivation for the domain team to share the data with others in the first place
• Agreed service levels can be monitored, with an alerting system in place
• A contract can be canceled

Automation

• Data contracts can be provided to all potential customers by the data product developers and accepted through the data product consumer as a self-service.
• Data platform automates the creation and revocation of IAM identities, roles, and access policies
• Reassessment reminder notification

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