005·75

schema drift

/ˈskiː.mə drɪft/ - n.

1 [colloq.] The source renamed a column and told no one, in the same spirit it once promised the contract was stable.Keep. Punchy.This is the problem.

Working definition

2. Unannounced changes to a source's structure — added, removed, or retyped fields — that a downstream pipeline was not designed to accommodate.

Promoted

See also

brittle jobA job documented entirely in the muscle memory of the one person who knows which step to re-run first.
connectorA component marked 'maintained' until the source changes its API, after which it is marked 'a meeting'.
data contractA written agreement about what the source will send, honored until the source has a deadline.
ingestionAccepting whatever a source sends, on the working theory that the schema it sent last week is the schema it will send today.