Data Contracts vs Schemas

🧪 Active Investigation Why do systems break during seemingly safe schema changes without data contracts?

CURRENT POSITION Systems fail during safe schema changes because schemas validate structure, while data contracts define meaning, assumptions, and behavioral guarantees that are rarely made explicit.

KEY ASSUMPTIONS Schemas alone cannot capture semantic meaning or consumer assumptions Most production data bugs are caused by semantic drift rather than structural incompatibility AI-generated code accelerates schema changes faster than teams can reason about data meaning

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE Production incidents often occur after backward-compatible schema changes that silently alter data semantics for consumers.

OPEN QUESTIONS How effectively teams can enforce and evolve data contracts in fast-moving, AI-assisted development environments

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