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COMPEL Glossary / data-contract

Data contract

A versioned, testable specification of a data product's schema, semantics, quality expectations, SLA, and change-management policy — published by the producer, consumable by downstream AI workloads.

What this means in practice

Enables trustworthy data exchange across organizational boundaries without tight implementation coupling; central to the data-mesh architectural pattern.

Synonyms

data product contract , dataset contract

See also

  • Provenance — The record of origin and custody for a data asset — who collected it, from whom, under what legal basis, and through which hands it passed — required for auditability of high-risk AI under EU AI Act Article 10.
  • Datasheet for datasets — A structured dataset documentation artifact covering motivation, composition, collection process, preprocessing, uses, distribution, and maintenance — modeled after electronic-component datasheets.

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