What is a data mesh?
The concept of a data mesh was introduced around 2019 by Zhamak Dehghani, who at the time was a consultant for a company called ThoughtWorks. The data mesh architecture was built around four principles:
- Domain-oriented, decentralized data ownership
- Data as a product
- Self-service data infrastructure as a platform
- Federated computational governance
Over time, as with data lakes, the term began to mean different things to different people. Some organizations would claim they had implemented a data mesh because they had enabled data sharing between multiple data lakes, while others would go all in with organizational change, in addition to building technology stacks to support a data mesh.
I believe that it is okay for a term to evolve and change, but that does mean that when someone uses a term such as data mesh, you need to ask them exactly what that means to them. If someone defines a data mesh as the ability to share data...
