Data Contracts

Robert Sahlin wrote a nice post on the data platform at MatHem, a Swedish retailer.

On the panel with STRM yesterday Avi asked the question:

What do you think about having data contract with business context?

You can’t use data contracts - or anything - to try to gain control over something owned by someone else.

Over on Medium I’ve published a post about a contract-based data platform, which is an updated version of my post to this newsletter back in December.

I wrote earlier this month that data contracts shouldn’t focus on enforcement.

By which I meant, the outcome you’re optimising for isn’t enforcing rules on someones data, but instead using data contracts to facilitate a better quality dataset that allows others to build on it with confidence.

Next Thursday I’ll be discussing data contracts and how they pave the way for effective enforcement on a webinar hosted by STRM.

The data contract must be owned by the data producer.

Only they have the full context on the data, what it’s purpose is, and its limitations.

A few months back Whatnot published a great post on how they are using data contracts.

In a response to my LinkedIn post on how every data transform is technical debt, Tim Hiebenthal commented:

I totally agree with your statements, but I have doubts about the feasibility of implementing it.

Data contracts can be applied in various places, but they’re most useful at the boundaries of ownership.