Medallion Architecture Explained: Bronze, Silver, and Gold Layers

The medallion architecture is a structured approach for organizing data in a lakehouse, refining it through three layers: bronze, silver, and gold, to improve data quality and usability progressively. Popularized by Databricks and embraced by platforms like Microsoft Fabric and Snowflake, this pattern facilitates the transformation of raw, messy data into trusted, business-ready insights. The bronze layer serves as an immutable archive of raw data, the silver layer cleans and standardizes it, and the gold layer aggregates it for business consumption. Each layer has distinct roles and consumers, ensuring clarity and separation of concerns, which allows for easier auditing and lineage tracking. The architecture supports the ELT process, favoring incremental transformations within the platform, and is flexible enough to accommodate different use cases and data quality requirements. The medallion approach is not tied to any specific platform, despite its origins with Databricks, and is compatible with various open table formats like Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, and Apache Hudi, which provide the necessary ACID guarantees and schema enforcement.

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