# Data Mesh

> A decentralised approach to analytical data built on domain ownership, data products, a self-serve platform, and federated governance.

- HTML version: https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/data-mesh
- Source: https://martinfowler.com/articles/data-mesh-principles.html

Data Mesh applies domain-oriented ownership to analytical data. Domain teams own data products,
a platform makes the common work self-service, and governance is automated and federated rather
than delegated to one central queue.

The four principles matter together:

* domain ownership of analytical data;
* data as a product;
* a self-serve data platform; and
* federated computational governance.

Calling a collection of pipelines a mesh does not create those conditions. The difficult part is
organisational. Domain teams need the responsibility and capacity to serve trustworthy data, while
the platform and governance functions must reduce duplicated effort without taking ownership back.

I use Data Mesh as a way to reason about where data knowledge lives. It is a poor default for a
small organisation, where the cost of distributed ownership can exceed the coordination problem it
is meant to solve.

## Related ideas

- [Conway's Law](https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/conways-law.md): The structure of a system tends to reproduce the communication structure of the organisation that built it.
- [Domain-Driven Design](https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/domain-driven-design.md): Model software around the language, rules, and boundaries of the problem domain.

## Where it appears

- Project: [Real-Time Multi-Camera Video Analytics](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/real-time-multi-camera-video-analytics.md)
- Blog post: [How to Enable Multi-omic Data Management](https://robbiepalmer.me/blog/2022-02-28-enabling-multi-omic-data-management.md)
- Blog post: [The Philosophy of Data Science](https://robbiepalmer.me/blog/2022-03-02-the-philosophy-of-data-science.md)
- Blog post: [Uniting the Machine Learning and Data Streaming Ecosystems - Part 1](https://robbiepalmer.me/blog/2023-03-28-uniting-machine-learning-data-streaming-1.md)

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