Thought Leader: Bhavin Vyas
Data is the backbone of a digitally driven business. In this data-thriving world, every enterprise generates an immense amount of data. Data Lakehouse provides a data management platform, but that alone is not enough; a reliable structure is necessary for businesses to prevent data swap, i.e., a large volume of complex data that is extremely difficult to structure and navigate. This is where Medallion architecture comes to the rescue, providing businesses with a reliable structure and enabling them to streamline data management in layers while ensuring scalability and quality.
Medallion architecture is created by Databricks, which makes data more manageable. It stores data in three layers: bronze, silver, and gold. Business implements this data management approach with tools like Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, and Databricks to unlock powerful insights for your business. This blog delves into how Medallion architecture can help simplify data management across platforms like Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, and Databricks.
History of Data Management—Data Lake, Data Warehouse, and Data Lakehouse
Gone are the days when data could fit into the tables. Traditional data warehouses lacked efficiency in managing and structuring the growing data volumes. Then, Data Lakehouse came into the picture with advanced data management capabilities that fulfilled the modern data management solution. It combines aspects of data warehouse solutions and data lakes.
Data Warehouse Solutions
The data Warehouse was first created in the 1980s to solve the need for consolidated data. It has been a prominent solution for a very long time in handling complex data management and driving data-driven decision-making. However, it could not support enterprises with the increasing volume of diverse unstructured data.
Data Lake
With the rise of social media platforms between the years 2000 and 2010, a new revolution of data emerged, and that led to the requirement for companies to store vast amounts of data from different sources and formats. To solve these new data management demands, data lakes were designed. It is a large repository that can efficiently store unlimited unstructured data without the need to invest time in sorting and cleaning.
Data Lakehouse
Data Lake was efficient in scaling volumes of data, but it often could not organize the data, leading to data swaps. Thus, the need for a hybrid solution known as Data Lakehouse emerged around 2010. The new data management solution was designed to efficiently store unstructured data along with supporting real-time processing and queries. Data Lakehouse provides the best of both worlds, i.e., it combines the structure of a data warehouse solution and the scalability of data lakes.
What is Medallion Architecture within Data Lakehouse?
Medallion Architecture is a framework that structures data into three layers within the data lake house: bronze, silver, and gold. Data in each layer undergoes a processing stage for better accessibility and management.
- Bronze Layer: This is where raw data from various sources is collected. It’s unprocessed and stored exactly as it is received, providing a solid foundation for all future transformations.
- Silver Layer: At this stage, data is cleaned, structured, and made ready for analysis. It’s transformed into a more usable format while retaining traceability.
- Gold Layer: This is the polished, final version of the data layer. It’s highly refined and designed for dashboards, reports, and advanced analytics.
Decoding the Advantages of Medallion Architecture
Medallion architecture offers several compelling benefits, making it an ideal choice for modern data management.
- Ease of Management: It breaks down large datasets into manageable pieces.
- Improved Decision-Making: Provides clean, reliable data for better insights.
- Adaptability: Works for various business needs, from real-time analytics to historical reporting.
- Transparency: Tracks how data evolves, ensuring accuracy at every step.
- Cost Efficiency: Reduces waste by processing only the data you need for specific purposes.
Key Features of Medallion Architecture Layered Design
- Data Traceability: Enables end-to-end visibility of data lineage, helping identify errors or bottlenecks.
- Scalability: Supports growing data volumes without compromising performance.
- Integration-Friendly: Works seamlessly with cloud-native platforms like Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, and Databricks.
- Real-Time Insights: Facilitates faster reporting and analytics by curating ready-to-use datasets.
How to Implement Medallion Architecture on Popular Platforms
Snowflake
Snowflake’s powerful cloud-based tools make it easy to apply Medallion Architecture. It offers scalability and enhanced data governance. It helps organize data into bronze, silver, and gold layers, ensuring robust data governance and superior performance.
- Bronze Layer: Use Snowpipe to load raw data into staging tables, keeping it intact for audits or debugging.
- Silver Layer: Transform and clean data with SQL to make it analytics ready.
- Gold Layer: Create materialized views or curated datasets for dashboards and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Additional Insights:
- Take advantage of Snowflake’s time travel feature to track changes in data across layers.
- Use virtual warehouses for workload-specific processing to optimize performance and cost.
Use Cases:
- Bronze: Store unprocessed clickstream logs for later analysis.
- Silver: Clean marketing campaign data to evaluate effectiveness.
- Gold: Build interactive dashboards for tracking revenue growth.
Microsoft Fabric
Medallion Architecture is easily integrated with Microsoft Fabric. It ensures data security and quality by building distinct lake homes at every layer. Moreover, Fabric makes setting up access controls and data pipelines easier.
- Bronze Layer: Ingest raw data using Synapse Pipelines or Dataflows and store it securely.
- Silver Layer: Process and refine data using Power Query or Synapse Analytics, preparing it for analysis.
- Gold Layer: Provide actionable insights with Power BI dashboards tailored for business users.
Additional Insights:
- Leverage Microsoft Fabric native AI capabilities to enhance data quality and identify trends in the Silver Layer.
- Create paginated reports in Power BI for detailed operational analysis.
Use Cases:
- Bronze: Archive IoT sensor readings for quality control.
- Silver: Process factory production data to ensure smooth operations.
- Gold: Visualize supply chain performance with real-time dashboards.
Databricks
Databricks’ Lakehouse architecture is an ideal fit for Medallion Architecture. It works well, combining the capability of Delta Lake speed and improving analytics and machine learning by organizing data in the three layers.
- Bronze Layer: Ingest raw data into Delta Lake using Databricks Autoloader. This stage supports exploratory analysis and data recovery.
- Silver Layer: Use Databricks notebooks to clean and aggregate data for operational analytics.
- Gold Layer: Deploy Delta Live Tables to create curated datasets ready for predictive modeling and reporting.
Additional Insights:
- Utilize Databricks SQL for ad hoc querying and self-service reporting.
- Combine Delta Lake’s ACID transactions with ML flow for seamless integration of machine learning workflows.
Use Cases:
- Bronze: Store raw customer reviews for sentiment analysis.
- Silver: Process interaction data to identify churn patterns.
- Gold: Develop dashboards showcasing customer satisfaction trends.
Overcoming Challenges with Medallion Architecture
- Data Duplication: Use deduplication techniques in the Silver Layer to ensure unique datasets.
- Pipeline Complexity: Simplify workflows with automation tools like Snowflake tasks, Fabric Pipelines, or Databricks workflows.
- Cost Optimization: Regularly monitor storage and compute costs and archive unused data from the Bronze Layer.
- Data Governance: Implement role-based access controls to protect sensitive data and maintain compliance.
Tips for Successful Implementation Automate Data Workflows
- Use tools like Snowflake tasks, Fabric Pipelines, or Databricks workflows to streamline data processes.
- Tailor Each Layer to Your Needs: Design each layer to address specific business challenges, ensuring data usability at every stage.
- Empower Teams with the Gold Layer: Provide business teams with user-friendly dashboards and reports for self-service analytics.
- Monitor and Improve: Continuously refine your data pipelines to enhance performance and efficiency.
Unlock the Power of Your Data with Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, and Databricks
Medallion Architecture provides an organized method for turning unstructured data into insights that can be used. It improves decision-making, streamlines data administration, and fortifies your analytics plan for the future. But merely cleaning and organizing data is not enough; you also need precise, pertinent data from reliable sources. Stridely Solutions enables businesses to collect high-quality data from a variety of sources and incorporate it seamlessly into Medallion Architecture and Data Lakehouse. We assist you in achieving effective data management by providing you with automated data intake solutions and bespoke online pipelines, which guarantee that your decisions are supported by trustworthy insights.