The Architect’s Decision Framework

Part 2: The Architecture Landscape

Part 2: The Architecture Landscape opened by naming six patterns worth recognizing on sight — Lambda, Kappa, lakehouse, medallion, mesh, fabric. Knowing the landscape isn’t the same skill as choosing a path across it, though, and that’s the gap this group closes: it’s the toolkit for deciding, not another survey of options. These four topics build one continuous argument — deal with uncertainty deliberately (two-way vs. one-way doors, build vs. buy vs. compose), understand why the “right” answer keeps moving (the warehouse-to-mesh evolution), internalize the one diagram every pattern is a variation of (source through consume), and finish with a reusable six-dimension model you can run any future choice through, including ones this course hasn’t named yet.

mindmap
  root((The Architect's Decision Framework))
    Deciding Under Uncertainty: Requirements, Constraints & Build vs Buy vs Compose
      Two-way door vs one-way door
    The Evolution of Data Architecture: Warehouse to Lake to Lakehouse to Mesh/Fabric
      Centralized lineage vs decentralized lineage
    The Reference Architecture: Source to Ingest to Store to Transform to Serve to Consume
      The six boxes every pattern maps onto
    A Mental Model for Architecture Choices: Table Formats, Cloud Providers, Hybrid Cloud & Build vs Buy
      Cost, control, complexity, lock-in, skill, reversibility

This group leans hard on what Architecture Patterns Deep Dive already established and hands several of its own ideas forward to later groups. See also: The Evolution of Data Architecture revisits every pattern from Architecture Patterns Deep Dive by name; A Mental Model for Architecture Choices applies its six-dimension framework to the AWS/Azure/hybrid tooling covered in AWS, Azure & Hybrid/Multi-Cloud Tooling for Data Professionals and to the table-format decision covered in depth in Table Formats: Delta vs Iceberg vs Hudi.

Topics

#	Topic
1	Deciding Under Uncertainty: Requirements, Constraints & Build vs Buy vs Compose
2	The Evolution of Data Architecture: Warehouse to Lake to Lakehouse to Mesh/Fabric
3	The Reference Architecture: Source to Ingest to Store to Transform to Serve to Consume
4	A Mental Model for Architecture Choices: Table Formats, Cloud Providers, Hybrid Cloud & Build vs Buy

| ← Previous: Choosing Among the Patterns: Comparison & Decision Guide | Next: Deciding Under Uncertainty: Requirements, Constraints & Build vs Buy vs Compose → | |:—|—:|

The Architect’s Decision Framework

Topics

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