The Medallion Data Architecture: An Introduction

The Medallion architecture is a data platform design pattern that organizes data into three distinct layers: bronze, silver, and gold. The bronze layer stores raw, unfiltered data as it arrives from source systems, the silver layer contains cleaned and validated data, and the gold layer holds aggregated, business-ready datasets for analytics and reporting. This layered approach, popularized by Databricks, progressively improves data quality and provides a clear structure for data pipelines, making them more trustworthy and easier to manage. The implementation can be achieved using various data engineering tools like SQL and Python, as demonstrated with a practical DuckDB example for processing retail order data.