What Makes Up a Data Contract
In this chapter, we’re going to look at what exactly makes up a data contract. This includes the schema, which describes and documents the structure of the data. We’ll discuss why this is important and show how we can define the schema in several open source schema formats.
A schema can only describe data at a point in time. However, as the needs of the organization change, so too does our data. We’ll explore how we can support the evolution of our data, while still providing data consumers the stability they need to build on this data with confidence.
However, data contracts are more than just a schema. As we’ve discussed in previous chapters, we need our data contracts to capture metadata that describes how the data can be used, how it is governed, and the controls around the data. We’ll show how we do that, and how we can use that metadata to drive tooling and integrate with other services.
By the end of this...
