Contracts make expectations explicit¶
Statement¶
Expectations that matter to producers and consumers should be made explicit, machine-readable where practical, and testable wherever enforcement can be automated.
Rationale¶
Undocumented expectations become tribal knowledge. Tribal knowledge does not scale well across autonomous teams, organisational boundaries or automated systems.
Implications¶
Contracts should capture more than schema. Depending on the context, expectations may include semantics, quality, freshness, ownership, compatibility, security and operational commitments.
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