Recommended Introductory Content
We have a subset of this content on our recommended pages that are exclusively written (posts and articles), videos and presentations (includes slide decks), and podcasts if you have a preferred content type.
To be clear, you do not have to consume all of the following content to understand the basics of data mesh. This is a good path of escalation and learning so you can truly grok how you might implement at your company. The written content on this page is quite dense so for most, it’s best to start with the recommended podcasts + presentations below or jump to our written content page.
We recommend starting with Zhamak Dehghani’s presentations at the Datanova Summit as your first two pieces of content; they provide a strong understanding of why Zhamak developed the data mesh framework and how to approach deploying data mesh in your company based on her most up-to-date thinking:
Introduction to Data Mesh (video; 23min)
How to Build a Foundation for Data Mesh (video; 27min)
The next piece we recommend is Zhamak’s recent podcast interview with Barry O’Reilly (LinkedIn; Twitter) on the Unlearn podcast. A key point is how to get started with deploying data mesh at minute 35.
Decentralizing Data: From Data Monolith to Data Mesh with Zhamak Dehghani (audio with accompanying written overview but no transcript; 56min)
As a simple refresher on what you’ve learned, we recommend reading through this quick article that does a good job laying out the four pillars of data mesh and the potential challenges. The sales-y level is low enough to not be annoying.
Data Mesh: The Four Principles of a Distributed Architecture by Eleks (consulting company)
After those four pieces of content, you should understand quite a bit about data mesh. If you’d like to continue learning more, we recommend the following pieces of content.
Next, we recommend a presentation by Zalando and ThoughtWorks on Zalando’s data mesh implementation. It really crystalizes the way you could implement a data mesh yourself e.g. how to offer self-serve data infrastructure.
Data Mesh in Practice: How Europe’s Leading Online Platform for Fashion Goes Beyond the Data Lake (video; 31min) by Max Schultze, Zalando (LinkedIn) and Dr. Arif Wider, ThoughtWorks (LinkedIn)
Next, we recommend Zhamak’s original data mesh article on Martin Fowler’s blog. It is a very dense but incredibly well-written and organized overview, offering a solution the VERY large problem impacting many companies using a data lake. Zhamak prescribes to the saying of “you can’t just point out a flaw, you need to offer a solution” so she did 😀
How to Move Beyond a Monolithic Data Lake to a Distributed Data Mesh by Zhamak Dehghani
Zhamak’s appearance on Sam Ramji’s (LinkedIn; Twitter) Open Source Data podcast gives a bit of a different flavor in that it is less interview about data mesh and more of a conversation that touches on many topics. It covers microservices and service mesh’s influence on data mesh and how Zhamak adapted her thinking from the operational plane to apply to the analytics plane.
Data Meshes: Big Data Architecture Becoming Distributed, Declarative and Domain Oriented (audio; transcript available; 28min)
Next is Zhamak’s second article on Martin Fowler’s blog where she delves deeper into data mesh. It’s another incredibly well written piece that answers a lot of the lingering questions from her initial post.
Data Mesh Principles and Logical Architecture by Zhamak Dehghani
If you are still hungry for more content after this, we recommend checking out the pages with specific content types.