Systems Analyst: What is data mesh architecture?

Data mesh — decentralized data architecture by domain ownership.

Four principles:

1. Domain ownership: Each domain owns its data as a product.
2. Data as a product: Data is discoverable, addressable, trustworthy.
3. Self-serve data platform: Infrastructure for domain teams.
4. Federated computational governance: Global standards, local execution.

vs Centralized data:

• Data warehouse: centralized team, bottleneck.
• Data mesh: distributed ownership, scaling.

Domain data products:

• Published with SLA (freshness, quality).
• Discoverable via data catalog.
• Schema managed with versioning.

Platform capabilities:

• Data storage and compute abstraction.
• Data catalog and discovery.
• Pipeline orchestration.
• Access control and governance.

Challenges:

• Organizational change (domain autonomy).
• Cross-domain data discovery.
• Consistent governance across domains.
• Requires mature engineering culture.