This repository wants to define an open specification to define data products with the following principles in mind:

• Data Product as an indipendent unit of deployment
• Technology indipendence
• Extensibility

With an open specification it will be possible to create services for automatic deployment and interoperable components to build a Data Mesh platform.

The Data Product is composed by a general section with Data Product level information and four sub-structures describing components:

• Output Ports: representing all the different interfaces of the Data Product to expose the data to consumers
• Workloads: internal jobs/processes to feed the Data Product and to perform housekeeping (GDPR, regulation, audit, data quality, etc)
• Storage Areas: internal data storages where the Data Product is deployed, not exposed to consumers
• Observability: provides transparency to the data conusmer about how the Data Product is currently working. This is not declarative, but exposing runtime data.

Each Data Product component trait (output ports, workloads, observabilities, etc) will have a well defined and fixed structure and a "specific" one to handle technology specific stuff. The fixed structure must be technology agnostic. The first fields of teh fixed structure are more technical and linked to how the platform will handle them, while the last fields (specific excluded) are to be treated as pure metadata that will simplify the management and consumption.

• ID: [String] the unique identifier of the Data Product. This will never change in the life of a Data Product. Constraints:
  • allowed characters are [a-zA-Z0-9] and [_-]
  • the ID is a URN of the form urn:dmb:dp:$DPDomain:$DPName:$DPMajorVersion
• Name: [String] the name of the Data Product. This name is used also for display purposes, so it can contain all kind of characters. When used inside the Data Product ID all special characters are replaced with standard ones and spaces are replaced with dashes.
• FullyQualifiedName: [Option[String]] human-readable name that describes the Data Product.
• Description: [String] detailed description about what functional area this Data Product is representing, what purpose has and business related information.
• Kind: [String] type of the entity. Since this is a Data Product the only allowed value is dataproduct.
• Domain: [String] the identifier of the domain this Data Product is belonging to.
• Version: [String] this is representing the version of the Data Product. Displayed as X.Y.Z where X is the major version, Y is the minor version, and Z is the patch. Major version (X) is also shown in the Data Product ID and those fields (version and ID) must always be aligned with one another. We consider a Data Product as an indipendent unit of deployment, so if a breaking change is needed, we create a brand new version of it by chaning the major version. If we introduce a new feature (or patch) we will not create a new major version, but we can just change Y (new feature) or Z patch, thus not creating a new ID (and hence not creating a new Data Product). Constraints:
  • Major version of the Data Product is always the same as the major version of all of its components ,and it is the same version that is shown in both Data Product ID and component IDs.
• Environment: [String]: logical environment where the Data Product will be deployed.
• DataProductOwner: [String] Data Product owner, the unique identifier of the actual user that owns, manages, and receives notifications about the Data Product. To make it technology independent it is usually the email address of the owner.
• DataProductOwnerDisplayName [String]: the human readable version of DataProductOwner.
• Email: [Option[String]] point of contact between consumers and maintainers of the Data Product. It could be the owner or a distribution list, but must be reliable and responsive.
• InformationSLA: [Option[String]] describes what SLA the Data Product team is providing to answer additional information requests about the Data Product itself.
• Status: [Option[String]] this is an enum representing the status of this version of the Data Product. Allowed values are: [Draft|Published|Retired]. This is a metadata that communicates the overall status of the Data Product but is not reflected to the actual deployment status.
• Maturity: [Option[String]] this is an enum to let the consumer understand if it is a tactical solution or not. It is really useful during migration from Data Warehouse or Data Lake. Allowed values are: [Tactical|Strategic].
• Billing: [Option[Yaml]] this is a free form key-value area where is possible to put information useful for resource tagging and billing.
• Tags: [Array[Yaml]] free tags at Data Product level (please refer to OpenMetadata https://docs.open-metadata.org/openmetadata/schemas/entities/tagcategory).
• Specific: [Yaml] this is a custom section where we can put all the information strictly related to a specific execution environment. It can also refer to an additional file. At this level we also embed all the information to provision the general infrastructure (resource groups, networking, etc) needed for a specific Data Product. For example if a company decides to create a ResourceGroup for each data product and have a subscription reference for each domain and environment, it will be specified at this level. Also it is reccommended to put general security here, Azure Policy or IAM policies, VPC/Vnet, Subnet. This will be filled merging data defined at common level with values defined specifically for the selected environment.

The unique identifier of a Data Product is the concatenation of Domain, Name and Version. So we will refer to the DP_UK as a URN which ends in the following way: $DPDomain:$DPName:$DPMajorVersion.

• ID: [String] the unique identifier of the Output Port component. This will never change in the life of a Data Product or the component itself. Constraints:
  • allowed characters are [a-zA-Z0-9] and [_-].
  • the ID is a URN of the form urn:dmb:cmp:$DPDomain:$DPName:$DPMajorVersion:$OutputPortName.
• Name: [String] the name of the Output Port. This name is used also for display purposes, so it can contain all kind of characters. When used inside the Output Port ID all special characters are replaced with standard ones and spaces are replaced with dashes.
• FullyQualifiedName: [Option[String]] human-readable name that describes better the Output Port. It can also contain specific details (if this is a table this field could contain also indications regarding the databse and the schema).
• Description: [String] detailed explanation about the function and the meaning of the output port.
• Kind: [String] type of the entity. Since this is an Output Port the only allowed value is outputport.
• Version: [String] specific version of the output port. Displayed as X.Y.Z where X is the major version of the Data Product, Y is the minor feature and Z is the patch. Major version (X) is also shown in the component ID and those fields( version and ID) are always aligned with one another. Please note that the major version of the component must always corresponde to the major version of the Data Product it belongs to. Constraints:
  • Major version of the Data Product is always the same as the major version of all of its components and it is the same version that is shown in both Data Product ID and component ID.
• InfrastructureTemplateId: [String] the id of the microservice responsible for provisioning the component. A microservice may be capable of provisioning several components generated from different use case templates.
• UseCaseTemplateId: [Option[String]] the id of the template used in the builder to create the component. Could be empty in case the component was not created from a builder template.
• Allows: [Array[String]] It is an array of user/role/group related to LDAP/AD user. This field is defining who has access in read-only to this specific output port.
• Owners: [Array[String]] It is an array of user/role/group related to LDAP/AD user. This field defines who has all permissions on this specific output port.
• DependsOn: [Array[String]] An output port could depend on other output ports or storage areas, for example a SQL Output port could be dependent on a Raw Output Port because it is just an external table. Constraints:
  • This array will only contain IDs of other components.
• Platform: [Option[String]] represents the vendor: Azure, GCP, AWS, CDP on AWS, etc. It is a free field but it is useful to understand better the platform where the component will be running.
• Technology: [Option[String]] represents which technology is used to define the output port, like: Athena, Impala, Dremio, etc. The underlying technology is useful for the consumer to understand better how to consume the output port.
• OutputPortType: [String] the kind of output port: Files, SQL, Events, etc. This should be extendible with other values, like GraphQL or others.
• CreationDate: [Optional[String]] when this output port has been created.
• StartDate: [Optional[String]] the first business date present in the dataset, leave it empty for events or we can use some standard semantic like: "-7D, -1Y".
• ProcessDescription: [Option[String]] what is the underlying process that contributes to generate the data exposed by this output port.
• BillingPolicy: [Option[String]] how a consumer will be charged back when it consumes this output port.
• SecurityPolicy: [Option[String]] additional information related to security aspects, like restrictions, maskings, sensibile information.
• ConsumptionPolicy: [Option[String]] any other information needed by the consumer in order to effectively consume the data, it could be related to technical stuff, regulation, security, etc.
• SLO:[Yaml]
  • IntervalOfChange: [Option[String]] how often changes in the data are reflected.
  • Timeliness: [Option[String]] the skew between the time that a business fact occuts and when it becomes visibile in the data.
• Endpoint: [Option[URL]] this is the API endpoint that self-describe the output port and provide insightful information at runtime about the physical location of the data, the protocol must be used, etc.
• Tags: [Array[Yaml]] free tags at OutputPort level (please refer to OpenMetadata https://docs.open-metadata.org/openmetadata/schemas/entities/tagcategory)
• SampleData: [Option[Yaml]] provides a sample data of your Output Port. See OpenMetadata specification: https://docs.open-metadata.org/openmetadata/schemas/entities/table#tabledata
• Schema: [Array[Yaml]] when it comes to describe a schema we propose to leverage OpenMetadata specification: Ref https://docs.open-metadata.org/metadata-standard/schemas/entities/table#column. Each column can have a tag array and you can choose between simples LabelTags, ClassificationTags or DescriptiveTags. Here an example of classification Tag https://github.com/open-metadata/OpenMetadata/blob/main/catalog-rest-service/src/main/resources/json/data/tags/piiTags.json.
• SemanticLinking: [Option[Yaml]] here we can express semantic relationships between this output port and other outputports (also coming from other domains and data products). For example we could say that column "customerId" of our SQL Output Port references the column "id" of the SQL Output Port of the "Customer" Data Product.
• Specific: [Yaml] this is a custom section where we must put all the information strictly related to a specific technology or dependent from a standard/policy defined in the federated governance.

• ID: [String] the unique identifier of the Workload component. This will never change in the life of a Data Product or the component itself. Constraints:
  • allowed characters are [a-zA-Z0-9] and [_-].
  • the ID is a URN of the form urn:dmb:cmp:$DPDomain:$DPName:$DPMajorVersion:$WorkloadName.
• Name: [String] the name of the Workload. This name is used also for display purposes, so it can contain all kind of characters. When used inside the Workload ID all special characters are replaced with standard ones and spaces are replaced with dashes.
• FullyQualifiedName: [Optional[String]] human-readable name that describes better the Workload.
• Description: [String] detailed explaination about the purpose of the workload, what sources is reading, what business logic is applying, etc.
• Kind: [String] type of the entity. Since this is an Output Port the only allowed value is workload.
• Version: [String] specific version of the workload. Displayed as X.Y.Z where X is the major version of the Data Product, Y is the minor feature and Z is the patch. Major version (X) is also shown in the component ID and those fields( version and ID) are always aligned with one another. Please note that the major version of the component must always corresponde to the major version of the Data Product it belongs to. Constraints:
  • Major version of the Data Product is always the same as the major version of all of its components and it is the same version that is shown in both Data Product ID and component ID.
• InfrastructureTemplateId: [String] the id of the microservice responsible for provisioning the component. A microservice may be capable of provisioning several components generated from different use case templates.
• UseCaseTemplateId: [Option[String]] the id of the template used in the builder to create the component. Could be empty in case the component was not created from a builder template.
• Platform: [Option[String]] represents the vendor: Azure, GCP, AWS, CDP on AWS, etc. It is a free field but it is useful to understand better the platform where the component will be running.
• Technology: [Option[String]] represents which technology is used to define the workload, like: Spark, Flink, pySpark, etc. The underlying technology is useful to understand better how the workload process data.
• WorkloadType: [Option[String]] explains what type of workload is: Ingestion ETL, Streaming, Internal Process, etc.
• ConnectionType: [Option[String]] an enum with allowed values: [HouseKeeping|DataPipeline]; Housekeeping is for all the workloads that are acting on internal data without any external dependency. DataPipeline instead is for workloads that are reading from outputport of other DP or external systems.
• Tags: [Array[Yaml]] free tags at Workload level ( please refer to OpenMetadata https://docs.open-metadata.org/openmetadata/schemas/entities/tagcategory )
• ReadsFrom: [Array[String]] This is filled only for DataPipeline workloads and it represents the list of Output Ports or external systems that the workload uses as input. Output Ports are identified with DP_UK:$OutputPortName, while external systems will be defined by a URN in the form urn:dmb:ex:$SystemName. This filed can be elaborated more in the future and create a more semantic struct. Constraints:
  • This array will only contain Output Port IDs and/or external systems identifiers.
• Specific: [Yaml] this is a custom section where we can put all the information strictly related to a specific technology or dependent from a standard/policy defined in the federated governance.

• ID: [String] the unique identifier of the Storage Area component. This will never change in the life of a Data Product or the component itself. Constraints:
  • allowed characters are [a-zA-Z0-9] and [_-].
  • the ID is a URN of the form urn:dmb:cmp:$DPDomain:$DPName:$DPMajorVersion:$StorageAreaName.
• Name: [String] the name of the Storage Area. This name is used also for display purposes, so it can contain all kind of characters. When used inside the Storage Area ID all special characters are replaced with standard ones and spaces are replaced with dashes.
• FullyQualifiedName: [Optional[String]] human-readable name that describes better the Storage Area.
• Description: [String] detailed explanation about the function and the meaning of this storage area,
• Kind: [String] type of the entity. Since this is an Output Port the only allowed value is storage.
• Owners: [Array[String]] It is an array of user/role/group related to LDAP/AD user. This field defines who has all permissions on this specific storage area
• InfrastructureTemplateId: [String] the id of the microservice responsible for provisioning the component. A microservice may be capable of provisioning several components generated from different use case templates.
• UseCaseTemplateId: [Option[String]] the id of the template used in the builder to create the component. Could be empty in case the component was not created from a builder template.
• Platform: [Option[String]] represents the vendor: Azure, GCP, AWS, CDP on AWS, etc. It is a free field but it is useful to understand better the platform where the component will be running.
• Technology: [Option[String]] represents which technology is used to define the storage area, like: S3, Kafka, Athena, etc. The underlying technology is useful to understand better how the data is internally stored.
• StorageType: [Option[String]] the specific type of storage: Files, SQL, Events, etc.
• Tags: [Array[Yaml]] free tags at Storage area level ( please refer to OpenMetadata https://docs.open-metadata.org/openmetadata/schemas/entities/tagcategory )
• Specific: [Yaml] this is a custom section where we can put all the information strictly related to a specific technology or dependent from a standard/policy defined in the federated governance.

Observability should be applied to each Output Port and is better to represent it as the Swagger of an API rather than something declarative like a Yaml, because it will expose runtime metrics and statistics. Anyway is good to formalize what kind of information should be included and verified at deploy time for the observability API:

• ID: [String] the unique identifier of the observability API
• Name: [String] the name of the observability API
• FullyQualifiedName: [String] human-readable that uniquely identifies an entity
• Description: [String] detailed explanation about what this observability is exposing
• Endpoint: [URL] this is the API endpoint that will expose the observability for each OutputPort
• Completeness: [Yaml] degree of availability of all the necessary information along the entire history
• DataProfiling: [Yaml] volume, distribution of volume along time, range of values, column values distribution and other statistics. Please refer to OpenMetadata to get our default implementation https://docs.open-metadata.org/openmetadata/schemas/entities/table#tableprofile. Keep in mind that this is the kind of standard that a company need to set based on its needs.
• Freshness: [Yaml]
• Availability: [Yaml]
• DataQuality: [Yaml] describe data quality rules will be applied to the data, using the format you prefer.
• Specific: [Yaml] this is a custom section where we can put all the information strictly related to a specific technology or dependent from a standard/policy defined in the federated governance.