· Data Engineering · 2 min read
Data Contracts: Stopping Microservices from Breaking Your Warehouse
Software engineers change database schemas; Data engineers cry. Learn how Data Contracts enforce an agreement between producers and consumers.
It is a tale as old as time. A backend engineer decides to rename the user_id column to uuid to make the code cleaner. They deploy the change. It works perfectly for the app.
Meanwhile, the Data Warehouse pipeline, which runs overnight, crashes. The CEO’s dashboard is empty the next morning. The Data Engineer spends 4 hours fixing it.
The Root Cause: Implicit Dependencies
The problem is that the Data Warehouse is treated as an “Implicit Consumer.” The backend team doesn’t even know it exists, so they don’t know they broke it.
The Solution: Data Contracts
A Data Contract is an API Spec for your data. It is a formal agreement (often a YAML file) that defines:
- Schema: The fields (e.g.
user_id,email) and their types. - SLAs: How fresh the data will be (e.g. “updated every hour”).
- Ownership: Who is responsible if this breaks.
Enforcing the Contract
This isn’t just a document; it’s code.
- CI Checks: If a backend engineer tries to merge a Pull Request that changes a schema covered by a contract, the build fails.
- Versioning: If they must change it, they have to version the contract (v1 -> v2), giving the data learn time to migrate.
By treating data integration as a first-class API, we stop the “break-fix” cycle and bring stability to the warehouse.
** Tired of fixing broken pipelines?** Let’s implement robust Data Contracts. Talk to our engineers.
