[HN Gopher] Data Fabric vs. Data Mesh: What's the Difference?
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       Data Fabric vs. Data Mesh: What's the Difference?
        
       Author : electrum
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2021-11-18 16:55 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.starburst.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.starburst.io)
        
       | ekzhu wrote:
       | There is no reason for both approaches to not coexist: a
       | centralized catalog managed by a small team, setting the "gold
       | standard" for the many decentralized data producers and curators,
       | who are incentivized to maximize their impacts (i.e., usage) by
       | having higher quality data following the standard.
       | 
       | Another thing to point out: besides relying on the future
       | promises of ML, there are already many signals that can be used
       | by a centralized catalog for data discovery. For example: data
       | sketches (MinHash, Hyperloglog) for joinable datasets, social
       | signals (likes, comments, stars, etc. see Alation and Select Star
       | SQL), lineages through data movements (e.g., Azure Data Factory
       | and Azure Purview). If the centralized catalog uses those
       | signals, then the data producers are incentivized to provide them
       | for better visibility.
        
         | abadid wrote:
         | I agree that in theory they could both co-exist for the reasons
         | you state, but in practice I think it's unlikely a company that
         | invests in a data fabric (which is largely a technology cost)
         | is going to simultaneously invest in the incentives for the
         | data product creators that are necessary for the data mesh not
         | to become the wild west.
        
         | chrisjc wrote:
         | I had never heard of Data Fabric before. Now that I have, I'm
         | not sure they can exist without each other. In fact I would
         | imagine that the metadata accumulated by through the data
         | fabric would/could end up driving the data mesh implementation.
         | 
         | Perhaps apps and services will end up having to go through
         | data-coverage and data-quality verification steps before being
         | released. Analytics (and caching, joins, etc) as an after
         | thought is unacceptable in this day and age.
        
         | nerdponx wrote:
         | Maybe it's good to think of "fabric", "mesh", "warehouse", and
         | "lake" as design patterns for data.
        
       | oconnore wrote:
       | This reminds me of David Mindell's work on situated autonomy:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0-tafxh7gc
       | https://www.robotics.org/userAssets/riaUploads/file/20-OurRo...
       | 
       | > The highest levels of technology are not necessarily full
       | autonomy, but situated autonomy
       | 
       | > All autonomous systems are joint human-machine cognitive
       | systems
       | 
       | Fundamental questions: Where are the people? Which people are
       | they? What are they doing? When are they doing it?
        
       | claytonjy wrote:
       | So Data Fabric is a bolt-on solution that we can't even honestly
       | attempt today, while Data Mesh requires everyone in the
       | engineering org to embrace data products?
       | 
       | Sounds like startups might adopt Data Mesh, while it's easy to
       | reorient org-level behavior, but big enterprises are doomed to
       | carry forward their current messes until AI magically delivers us
       | Data Fabric as a viable option.
       | 
       | Anyone having more success with these approaches than my
       | pessimistic take implies? Is it easier to adopt Data Mesh in a
       | large org than I realize? Is Data Fabric a more viable option
       | than the author considers?
        
       | justicezyx wrote:
       | A surprisingly well-organized and meaningful description of 2
       | marketing concepts, seems targeted towards CXO's in making IT
       | solution buying decisions.
        
       | DrBenCarson wrote:
       | These are two buzzwords that I still, for whatever reason, feel
       | no momentum for.
        
         | recursive wrote:
         | So is data lake over now?
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-18 23:03 UTC)