The Data Vault Handbook - Concepts and Applications

1.2. DATA VAULT PILLARS Data Vault organizes its knowledge base around three main pillars, namely ar- chitecture, modeling, and methodolo- gy. Each pillar plays a crucial role in the overall framework, interacting and complementing each other to provide a comprehensive data management solu- tion.

Data Vault

ARCHITECTURE

A data architecture describes how the data pipelines are organized from the source system to the final destination, such as a report. It outlines each step in the pipeline, answering questions like: Should we transform the data immediately upon retrieval or later? Where do we integrate different data sources and formats? Where do we store historical data? How do we ensure data quality and consistency? And more. The Data Vault architecture provides a structured approach to defining clear steps (or layers) in our pipelines, each serving a distinct purpose. This will mean that with a clearly specified general blueprint of your project’s archi- tecture, you can organize the work more efficiently and minimize deviations from the plan. Additionally, modern approaches increasingly incorporate a domain-driv- en enterprise architecture, which structures data around specific business domains. This strategy aligns data pipelines closely with business functions, and Data Vault architecture is inherently adaptable to this approach, allow-