Identifying and Enabling Data Consumers
A data consumer can be defined as a person, or application, within an organization that needs access to data. Data consumers can vary from staff that pack shelves and need to know stock levels to the CEO of an organization that needs data to make a decision on which projects to invest in. A data consumer can also be a system that needs data from a different system.
Everything a data engineer does is to make datasets useful and accessible to data consumers, which, in turn, enables the business to gain useful insights from their data. This means delivering the right data, via the right tools, to the right people or applications, at the right time, to enable the business to make informed decisions.
Therefore, when designing a data engineering pipeline (as covered in Chapter 5, Architecting Data Engineering Pipelines), data engineers should start by understanding business objectives, including who the data consumers are and what their requirements...
