openvue
Data Products
What are Data Products?
A Data Product is a reusable data asset built to deliver a trusted dataset to a consumer. It is a broad term, encompasing everying from a BI dashboard, to an integration API to an AI Machine Learning model.
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Key characteristics of a Data Product, that sets it apart from any other data asset, is that it is intended to be reusable, is robust and trusted and has an owner who is accountable for its quality and reliability. A Data Product sources raw data from trusted sources, processes the data to ensure the data is of appropriate quality, and then makes it accessible and understandable to anyone who wants to use it.
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Data Products need to be managed and governed. The owner is typically responsible for gathering business requirements and use cases, defining a plan and then supporting the build, testing and deployment and ensuring access in a marketplace. The owner will also ensure that the Data Product is updated as needed, and continually improved.
What are the benefits of Data Products?
While most companies recognise that data is valuable, many struggle to unlock its potential. This is where Data Products can help. By investing in building reusable components that can be commoditised, data can be provided to consumers faster and more efficiently.
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Consider the example of a new Sales report. In the past, developing a report may involve first finding the right people in the business who know where sales data is held, then finding out how this could be connected to finance data. Business analysts would need to define requirements for developers to extract data from the relevant data sources and finally a reporting analyst would need to stitch all the relevant database fields together in a way that can be presented to the Sales team. Using a Data Product approach, simply combining a Sales data product with a Finance data product, using well defined identifiers, will enable a report to be created with minimum effort. And knowing that the information provided, is up-to-date and can be trusted.
Why is Traceability important?
Data Products use "data pipelines" to provide information to consumers. A pipeline can be thought of as a flow of information delivering value. Data may be sourced from one database, enriched and then output to a data lake ready to be consumed. These data pipelines are fundamental to the way that Data Products work.
Traceability is simply understanding the path of the data pipeline. By knowing where data was sourced from and how it flows, the Data Product owner can ensure it is monitored and quickly address any issues that occur, so that the end Data Product is not adversely affected.
How can Openvue help?
Openvue enables data flows, or data pipelines, to be made visible. This means that anyone involved in creating, testing, implementing or using the data pipelines, can easily see the status of the data at each stage. It makes life much easier for the teams involved with producing and deploying Data Products.