A day in the life of a data architect
In this section, we will explore a day in a data architect's life. As we stated in the introduction, this can help us understand and put into context some of the things that data architects do. It also helps us to translate their responsibilities in a practical way. Keep in mind that this is provided just as a general idea of how data architects spend their day and shouldn't be taken as an exact sequence of how they go about completing their duties:
The morning may look as follows:
- Document the proposed data model for an enhancement project related to order fulfillment. Prepare a presentation for the enterprise, IS, and integration architects and other technical stakeholders.
- Participate in a weekly meeting with EAs and other domain architects to align on existing policies and guidelines and new ones that may be under consideration.
- Participate in a project meeting with an integration architect and a System, Applications, and Products (SAP) solution architect looking to integrate work orders and invoicing with SAP and Salesforce.
The afternoon may look as follows:
- Analyze requirements from operations requiring access to Opportunity and Opportunity Products data in a data warehouse for reporting. Opportunity data is more than 5 million rows.
- Work on a request to archive Opportunity and Opportunity Products data. Look into the pros and cons of using big objects, Heroku, or other available options.
- Understand the capabilities of Einstein Analytics and explore its use cases and how it could meet the organization's analytics requirements. Also, explore Salesforce Tableau and its capabilities for reporting needs that are challenging to meet using the native reports and dashboards functionality.
- Present the proposed data model for the order fulfillment project. Field questions and seek feedback from the team.
In this section, we looked at a data architect's day to gain a better understanding of the role, the interactions they have with other stakeholders in the organization, and a glimpse of the research and prototyping that is required to be successful in the role.