Governed data,
written as governed data.
Practitioner writing on metadata, lineage, quality and governance, from a personal spreadsheet to millions of enterprise datasets. Every piece has a permanent ID, a review status, its sources, and is readable by people and AI agents alike.
Concepts
What something is
Business term vs business element
A term is a word and its meaning. An element is governed data that carries that meaning in one context. Governance attaches to the element.
The metadata map: every piece, one example
Catalog, glossary, dictionary, lineage, profiling, quality, contracts, semantic layer: what each one is, shown on a single loan-balance column.
Patterns
Reusable designs
Serving metadata to people, systems and agents
One canonical model, one governed write path, many read paths. How to turn catalog changes into subscribable domain events, and which channel serves which consumer.
Never recompute everything: incremental metadata feeds
A feed that reprocesses millions of datasets every run stops scaling. Recompute only what changed, plus what changed rules touch, and reconcile on a schedule.
Teardowns
Standards and tools, taken apart
Follow what we preach
This site is built on the rules it writes about: a data contract on every page, stable IDs, lineage to sources, change events, and a review workflow you can watch. Read the principles →
Write with us
Guest pieces go through the same contract and review as everything else, and carry your name. How to contribute →