Medallion Architecture Readiness Checklist

Use this guide to track when to promote from Bronze → Silver → Gold. Gain clarity and reduce risk.

🔨 Bronze to Silver

• ✅ Ingested and parsed successfully
• ✅ Schema is readable and consistent
• ✅ Basic validation passed
• ✅ Metadata is captured
• ✅ Append-only structure maintained

⚙️ Silver to Gold

• ✅ Data is cleaned and normalized
• ✅ Duplicates are handled
• ✅ Joins are verified
• ✅ Business logic is embedded
• ✅ Metrics are defined and consistent

⚠️ Common Mistakes

• ❌ Promoting raw data to Gold
• ❌ Skipping the Silver layer
• ❌ Missing lineage tracking
• ❌ Analyzing directly on Bronze

🔁 Architecture Alternatives

• 🔹 Lambda – Batch + real-time (operationally complex)
• 🔹 Kappa – Stream-first (replaying chaos if streams break)
• 🔹 Data Vault – Auditable history (slow queries)
• 🔹 Data Mesh – Federated domains (needs cultural maturity)
• 🔹 Event-Driven – High velocity (requires strict validation)

Glossary

Bronze Layer

Raw ingestion layer, append-only, used for traceability.

Silver Layer

Cleaned and validated data, joins applied for operational use.

Gold Layer

Modeled and business-ready data for strategic dashboards and KPIs.

Dimensional Modeling

Fact and dimension design for analytical performance (star schemas).