Finding data products in a growing enterprise data mesh ecosystem is a challenge, but traditional centralized data catalogs may not be the answer. Rather, data mesh’s federated approach opens new opportunities to create a window into your enterprise data mesh.
Traditional data catalogs have been built when there was no simple way to search and find data in a sprawling data landscape. Metadata is moved to a place where it could be stored in a consistent fashion and then applications are built that could search the catalog repository to find the data you were looking for. In effect, traditional data catalogs provided the “intelligence” that was needed to find and consume data in your enterprise.
But data mesh offers an alternative. Data products in a data mesh already own and maintain their metadata. And they have the clear boundaries, consistent access mechanisms and self-serve capability. In effect, they already have the “intelligence” required to find and consume data products and the data within them. So, in fact, we need a different catalog — one that takes into account the innate intelligence in data products.
Enter the Data Mesh Registry, a lightweight yet powerful DNS-like registry that makes it easy to find, consume, share, and trust data products and the data within them.
This article explains the Data Mesh Registry concept. First, I start by examining the limitations of traditional data catalogs, which, despite their pivotal role, are increasingly misaligned with the needs of a rapidly evolving data mesh ecosystem.
Next, I introduce the Data Mesh Registry concept. I explain what it is and how it aligns to core data mesh principles and explain how these principles lead to the Registry’s simplicity and efficiency that suggests the Data Mesh Registry is much more closely related to the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) in its architecture and functionality, than to traditional data catalogs.