I don’t think we talk about this enough. When I say data architecture here, what I mean is the structure that our data is in. There are many decisions going into data architecture all the time. These include:
- What grain to go to
- How much we de-normalise
- What we do in terms of layers (e.g. bronze, silver, gold)
- How we set up our Semantic Models
There is just so much to talk about here and there have been many great books written on this subject.
In an environment where Self Serve takes a bucket of steroids and people start creating reports in a way we’ve never seen before, we can’t really overstate the importance of the structure of our data being in a good place.
Related: importance of the semantic model. Part of my MCP Servers for Conversational BI talk.