Glossary

Plain-language definitions of the terms used across the Data Product Standard. Where a term has a fuller explanation, its name links to it.

Core concepts

Term	Meaning
Data product	A curated, governed unit of data with a clear purpose, a named owner, and a defined way to consume it. Belongs to exactly one domain.
Data asset	A single real piece of data in a source system — a table, file, dashboard, or API. Assets are the raw material a data product packages and publishes; on their own they carry no owner or contract.
Domain	A business area, such as Sales or Finance, that owns a set of related data products. Every product belongs to exactly one.
Data Mesh	The approach behind the model: data owned as a product by the domain closest to it, rather than by a central team.
Data Market	The catalog where published data products are discovered and requested. Only products in production appear.

Ports and interfaces

Term	Meaning
Output port	The interface through which a data product publishes data to consumers. Holds assets from one technology, governed by one contract.
Input port	The interface through which a data product reads from another product’s output port.
Management port	An operational interface for monitoring, health, and logging signals — kept separate from the data a product publishes.

Contracts, quality, and commercial terms

Term	Meaning
Data contract	The agreement a data product makes about what it delivers through a port — schema, quality, service levels, and terms. Has its own lifecycle.
Service Level Agreement (SLA)	The operational commitments a product makes to consumers — availability, freshness, and support response.
Data quality check	A rule that tests whether data meets a defined expectation, such as completeness, with a severity.
Pricing plan	How access to a data product is priced, when it is not free.
License	The terms under which a consumer may use a product’s data.
Data holder	The organization accountable for the data a product delivers.

Classification

Term	Meaning
PII Level	Classification of how much personal information an asset contains; drives privacy obligations.
Confidentiality	Classification of who may see an asset; drives access rules.

Accountability

Term	Meaning
Owner	The single person accountable for a data product. Required before it reaches production.
Steward	Accountable for a product’s meaning and quality; approves its data contract. Optional, not a gate.
Custodian	Runs the pipelines and systems that produce the data.
Subject-matter expert (SME)	Consulted for domain context; not accountable for delivery.
Producer	The team or on-call group behind the product’s output.
Consumer	A team that uses a data product. Tracked through relations, not an ownership role.

Lifecycle and standards

Term	Meaning
Workflow state	The point a product has reached in its lifecycle, from announcement to retired.
Dawiso Unified Data Product Model	Dawiso’s single model for a data product, combining ODPS for the product, ODCS for contracts, and Data Mesh ports. Every field traces back to a published standard; it is not a standard in its own right.
ODPS (Open Data Product Specification)	The open specification Dawiso uses to describe the data product itself, from opendataproducts.org, version 4.1. Bitol publishes a different standard with the same acronym, which Dawiso does not use.
ODCS (Open Data Contract Standard)	The open standard, from Bitol, that Dawiso uses to describe data contracts. Version 3.1.0.