When upstream changes break everything
An engineer renames a column, and three dashboards quietly go wrong. Data contracts make expectations explicit, so changes don't break things downstream in silence.
What a contract defines
- Schema: fields, types, and what's required.
- Semantics: what each field actually means.
- Guarantees: freshness, volume, and allowed values.
- Ownership: who to contact before changing it.
Catch issues before they spread
With contracts enforced in the pipeline, a breaking change fails fast at the source—not three layers downstream in front of a stakeholder.
