Chapter 1, A Brief History of Data Platforms, looks at how, despite advances in technology, by not advancing architecture, we haven’t managed to move away from the same old problems of data lacking quality and failing to deliver business value.

Chapter 2, Introducing Data Contracts, introduces data contracts as the solution to those problems. We’ll provide a definition and discuss the four principles that underpin data contracts. We’ll also discuss how data contracts relate to data mesh.

Chapter 3, How to Get Adoption in Your Organization, starts us on the journey toward implementing and deploying data contracts, and the culture change needed for a successful adoption. We’ll also discuss the idea of data products and why applying a product mindset to your data is so important.

Chapter 4, Bringing Data Consumers and Generators Closer Together, looks at why it’s so important to bring these groups of people much closer together. We’ll define those roles and be clear on the responsibilities and accountabilities of each.

Chapter 5, Embedding Data Governance, discusses why data governance is so important and how, by embedding it into data contracts, we can unlock a range of automations that makes it easy to manage our data.

Chapter 6, What Makes Up a Data Contract, looks at exactly what makes up a data contract, including the schema. We’ll also discuss how to support the evolution of data, while still providing data consumers the stability they need to build on data with confidence.

Chapter 7, A Contract-Driven Data Architecture, shows how to use data contracts to drive our data architecture. We explain why this is a step-change in how we build data platforms, promoting the autonomous self-service of effective data tooling.

Chapter 8, A Sample Implementation, puts the concepts we have been learning into practice by building an end-to-end sample implementation of data contracts.

Chapter 9, Implementing Data Contracts in Your Organization, discusses how to get started with data contracts in your organization, building that up with the tooling and culture change required until you reach maturity.

Chapter 10, Data Contracts in Practice, looks at how we work with data contracts on a day-to-day level, including designing a data contract, monitoring and enforcement, and publishing patterns for data generators.