Publishing dependable datasets
The role of the delivery layer is to make our data, built in the REF layer, accessible to our users, who will use them in a variety of ways.
One thing that we can be sure about is that the more often we change the layout of our data in the delivery layer, the less happy our customers will be as they must react to all our changes.
Unexpected changes are another good way to anger your customers.
What should we learn from this?
Managing data marts like APIs
The tables and views that you publish in your data marts are the public APIs of your data platform, so you should handle them as such.
These are the basic starting points to make the life of your clients better:
- Provide clear and consistent naming for columns and tables.
As an example, do not call the same thing PRODUCT_ID in one place and PRODUCT_CODE in another. Always use the same term for the same concept, and do not mix synonyms (PRODUCT, ITEM, MERCHANDISE, and so...
