An approach for redefining trust and accountability in modern data pipelines: Data contracts in the wild
Independent Researcher, California State University Northridge, USA.
Review Article
World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 2024, 24(02), 2888-2894
Article DOI: 10.30574/wjarr.2024.24.2.3279
Publication history:
Received on 13 October 2024; revised on 18 November 2024; accepted on 21 November 2024
Abstract:
Data contracts represent a transformative mechanism for redefining trust and accountability within distributed data ecosystems. As organizations face increasing challenges with data quality, ownership, and clarity across teams, data contracts emerge as a structured solution drawing inspiration from software engineering principles. These explicit agreements between producers and consumers specify schema, semantics, service level agreements, and behavioral expectations of data assets. By formalizing these relationships, organizations can mitigate schema drift, improve observability, and foster a culture of shared responsibility. Data contracts enable self-service platforms, support decentralized data ownership models like Data Mesh, and facilitate regulatory compliance. The operationalization of data contracts provides a blueprint for building resilient, transparent, and high-trust data pipelines essential for scaling analytics and Artificial Intelligence in complex, multi-team environments.
Keywords:
Data Contracts; Trust Mechanisms; Distributed Governance; Schema Enforcement; Data Product Engineering
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Copyright © 2024 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Liscense 4.0