Open Data Contract Standard (ODCS)

Welcome!

Thanks for your interest and for taking the time to come here! ❤️

Executive summary

This standard describes a structure for a data contract. Its current version is v3.0.0. It is available for you as an Apache 2.0 license. Contributions are welcome!

Discover the open standard

A reader-friendly version of the standard can be found on its dedicated site.

Discover the Open Data Contract Standard. This file contains some explanations and several examples. More examples can be found here.

What is a Data Contract?

The basics of a data contract

A data contract defines the agreement between a data producer and consumers. A data contract contains several sections:

• Fundamentals.
• Schema.
• Data quality.
• Support & communication channels
• Pricing
• Team
• Roles
• Service-level agreement (SLA).
• Infrastructures & servers
• Custom properties.

Figure 1: illustration of a data contract, its principal contributors, sections, and usage.

JSON Schema

JSON Schema for ODCS can be found here. You can import this schema into your IDE for validation of your YAML files. Links below show how you can import the schema:

• IntelliJ
• VS Code

Articles and Other Resources

Check out the resources page.

Contributing to the project

Check out the CONTRIBUTING page.

More

History

Formerly known as the data contract template, this standard is used to implement Data Mesh at PayPal. Starting with v2.2.0, it is maintained by a 501c6 non-profit organization called AIDA User Group (Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Analytics User Group). On November 30th, 2023, AIDA User Group and the Linux Foundation AI & Data joined forces to create Bitol. Bitol englobes ODCS and future standards & tools.

How does PayPal use Data Contracts?

PayPal uses data contracts in many ways, but this article from the PayPal Technology blog gives a good introduction.