Semantic Quay

Developers · Reference architecture

A metadata-driven data mesh, in the open.

A generic, illustrative reference implementation: one governed metadata contract drives the medallion pipelines, the published semantic layer, and warehouse serving — with classification and lineage enforced end to end. Synthetic data only. Free to read, run, and adapt.

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The components

Six packages, one source of truth.

contracts

Governed metadata spec

The single, versioned source of truth — entities, attributes, relationships, each carrying a classification. Sits on top of the controlled BDM/PDM.

pipelines

Medallion framework

A declarative registry generates bronze → silver → gold jobs, schedules, lineage, and an ops view. One entry defines a full medallion path.

semantic

Semantic publisher

Cube-style semantic models — cubes, measures, dimensions, governed access — generated from the contracts and published as machine-readable contracts.

warehouse

Warehouse serving

Snowflake-style DDL and serving views generated from the physical model, with classification carried through to masking and access roles.

governance

Governance CI

Gates that enforce classification coverage, registry consistency, and propagation completeness — preventing drift between spec, pipeline, semantic, and warehouse.

catalog

Data-product catalog

Machine-readable descriptors for each data product — schema, classification, owner, freshness, lineage — the discoverable face of the mesh.

Governed propagation

A change flows in one direction — and CI proves it arrived.

Edit the contract and the downstream surfaces regenerate. Classification coverage, registry consistency, and propagation completeness are enforced as gates — a change that stops at the contract is incomplete.

BDM / PDMContractDatabricksCubeSnowflake