Medallion Architecture - Design and Implementation
The design pattern that structures every pipeline in this guide: bronze (raw, near-source, auditable), silver (cleaned, validated, conformed), and gold (aggregated, consumer-specific). This section designs each layer’s responsibilities in turn, works through a real gold-table example end to end, and closes with a review of the tradeoffs and the most common anti-pattern – skipping a layer under deadline pressure. Sections 8-10 then implement this pattern with real Lakeflow tooling.
flowchart LR
Src[Source Systems] --> B[Bronze<br/>append-only, near-raw]
B --> SV[Silver<br/>validated, deduped,<br/>SCD2 where needed]
SV --> G[Gold<br/>consumer-specific,<br/>materialized or view]
G --> Con[Dashboards / ML / Apps]
Lectures
| # | Lecture | Est. Read |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What is Medallion Architecture | 6 min read |
| 2 | Designing the Bronze Layer | 9 min read |
| 3 | Designing the Silver Layer | 12 min read |
| 4 | Designing the Gold Layer | 6 min read |
| 5 | Architecture Review and Design Decisions | 6 min read |
| 6 | Check Your Knowledge | Quiz |
| ← Previous: Check Your Knowledge | Next: What is Medallion Architecture → | |:—|—:|