New technologies & concepts bring new idioms. Time to update your dictionary.

With every technology and paradigm comes new words and new combinations of words.

The data mesh is no exception and brings its set of neologism. This short article includes the industry’s terms and the coinage needed in day-to-day conversation. The definitions are very personal, coming from a potpourri of articles, books, videos, and other resources. After your read this few definitions, please suggest edits and additional ideas (or terms) in the comments.

This article is not meant to be completely serious. I am not a linguist and I am probably going to offend many purists.

Industry terms

Let’s start with a list of terms that you will easily find in many documents, tutorials, and videos. There might be alternate definition, but the ones I provided should be agreed upon by most.

Data Mesh

da·ta mesh
/ˈdādə meSH/
noun
noun: data mesh; plural noun: data meshes

  • Composition of data quanta organized as a mesh.

“Our data products did not communicate with one another. Now that we organized them as a data mesh, we reduced data latency and increased data quality.”

  • A type of data platform architecture.

“Since our analytics department switched to a data mesh architecture, we have measured an increase in accuracy and a return on investment within 12 months.”

  • A paradigm following those four principles: Principle of Domain Ownership, Principle of Data as a Product, Principle of the Self-Serve Data Platform, and Principle of Federated Computational Governance.

“The four principles behind the data mesh are like Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers: they are four, they are intermingled, and they are often éméchés.” Source.

Data Quantum

da·ta quan·tum
/ˈdādə ˈkwän(t)əm/
noun
noun: data quantum; plural noun: data quanta

  • The smallest element of a data architecture delivering business value.

“Our currency data quantum only holds a single table with five columns, but it is at the center of so many reports.”

  • The basic unit of a data mesh.

“When we started our data mesh, we only had three data quanta.”

  • Set of extensions to a data product enabling a data mesh.

“We have been producing data products for a while now, but adding the data quantum features as a sidecar demultiplied the value given to data scientists.”

  • A data product focusing on a single domain.

“By focusing on a single domain, we were able to deliver a top notch data product with the right domain experts.”

Neologism around the data mesh

Of course, it’s not only about existing terms, which are getting more and more used by the community and the industry at large. There are some new terms coming from the new processes associated with the actions around a data mesh. Here are some.

Quantafication

quan·ta·fi·ca·tion
/ˌkwänt̬.əfiˈkāSH(ə)n/
noun

  • The expression of transforming datasets or data products into a set of data quanta.

“This customer data product gained so much more features since its quantafication.”

Meshification

Mesh·i·fi·ca·tion
/meSHēfəˈkāSH(ə)n/
noun

  • The expression of assembling multiple data quanta in a data mesh.

“Those lone data quanta needed to go through meshification to bring more value.”

  • The expression of assembling multiple software components in a mesh.

“Before the meshification of data quanta, I meshed sevices in a service mesh.”

Do you have another definitions? Do you use another idiom? Do you have another example? Drop it in the comment, and I’ll update this glossary.