Medallion Architecture
The Medallion Architecture is a modern data design pattern used in data lake and lakehouse solutions to structure and progressively refine data as it flows through multiple layers. It enables teams to organize datasets in a modular, scalable, and maintainable way — ideal for analytics, reporting, and machine learning pipelines.
Overview
At its core, the Medallion Architecture breaks down data processing into three distinct layers:
Bronze Layer
The Bronze layer is the raw data layer. It contains the initial data ingested from the source system — in this project, it includes enriched movie metadata retrieved from the OMDb API. It is stored in a semi-structured format (e.g., JSON), with minimal transformation.
- Purpose: Capture raw, enriched data for traceability and reprocessing.
- Format: JSON files.
Silver Layer
The Silver layer holds cleansed and normalized data. It transforms raw inputs from the Bronze layer into consistent, validated, and structured formats, ready for business logic application and analytics.
- Purpose: Normalize, flatten, and prepare data.
- Format: CSV with defined schema.
Gold Layer
The Gold layer is the final, business-ready dataset. It contains aggregated, curated data designed for high-performance analytical workloads such as dashboards and business intelligence.
- Purpose: Serve business insights and enable efficient querying.
- Format: Multiple CSV outputs (e.g., top-rated movies, genre distribution, box office per year).
Why Medallion Architecture?
This architecture was chosen because it:
- Aligns with best practices for modern, scalable data pipelines.
- Decouples responsibilities across stages (enrichment, normalization, analytics).
- Improves maintainability and traceability by isolating transformations at each level.
- Enables reprocessing without touching the original source.
- Integrates well with the event-driven, serverless approach of this project.
Using this structure ensures that each transformation step is clearly defined and traceable, while enabling the flexibility to evolve each layer independently.
Learn More
To explore more about the Medallion Architecture and its applications in modern data platforms: