The similarities between software and data

I’m writing this on the train back from Paris, having spent the last few days at the apidays conference, where I gave a talk titled “Data contracts: The API for Data”. I have a lot of digest and plenty of notes to go through! But one think that struck me is the similarities between software and data.

At apidays there were talks and tracks around topics such as governance, discovery, catalogs, APIs-as-products, standards, contracts, documentation, culture, change management, observability, platforms and more! All of these are topics we discuss in data all the time.

There must be common solutions to these shared problems. Maybe we just need to talk more.