Data Platform

APIs and data contracts have a lot in common, and APIs were part of the inspiration behind data contracts when I was coming up with the idea a few years back.

In yesterday’s note I wrote about the problem with defaults.

Let’s say 20 years ago you ran your code in an environment you configured simply as python.

How do you like your data?

It’s that time of year again where teams everywhere are considering a code freeze for the holiday season.

I wrote yesterday about how by promoting autonomy we can empower the users of our data platform to take on more ownership and responsibility.

You might have noticed how I keep using the word autonomy in these posts, for example a couple of days ago when writing about a contract-based data platform and yesterday when linking to lessons from BlaBlaCar.

This blog post from BlaBlaCar shares some great lessons - not just for implementing data mesh, but for any platform team looking to build products for internal stakeholders.

Data contracts are powerful enough you can build a data platform based on them - one that is more flexible and more effective than those we built before and promotes a more decentralised approach to data.

A few years ago I, as tech lead of a data platform team, proposed that we shouldn’t be building a data platform.