The primary goal of a data product is to make the data it exposes easily accessible and reusable by its consumers. For this reason, data modeling is not a mere implementation detail, but a core aspect of product design.
In recent years, the schema-on-read approach has contributed to pushing modeling practices into the background. However, with the rise of data product–oriented architectures and the growing adoption of AI Agents designed to consume them, the need for explicit, robust, and reuse-oriented modeling has once again become central.
Fortunately, we’re not starting from scratch. Well-established techniques such as dimensional modeling, data vault, and the unified star schema provide a solid foundation. The challenge is that most of these were originally designed for monolithic, centralized environments like traditional data warehouses or data lakes.
In this talk, we’ll examine the main data modeling techniques and discuss how to adapt them to distributed and modular architectures, with the goal of designing AI-ready data products that are easy to use, reuse, and compose.
About Andrea Gioia (he/him)
Andrea Gioia is a Partner and CTO at Quantyca, a consulting company specializing in data management. He is also a co-founder of blindata.io, a SaaS platform focused on data governance and compliance. With over two decades of experience in the field, Andrea has led cross-functional teams in the successful execution of complex data projects across diverse market sectors, ranging from banking and utilities to retail and industry.
Actively involved in the data community, Andrea is a regular speaker, writer, and author of the book 'Managing Data as a Product’. Currently, he is the main organizer of the Data Engineering Italian Meetup and leads the Open Data Mesh Initiative. Within this initiative, Andrea has published the Data Product Descriptor Specification (DPDS) and is guiding the development of the open-source ODM Platform to support the automation of the data product lifecycle.
Andrea is an active member of DAMA and, since 2023, has been part of the scientific committee of the DAMA Italian Chapter.
About Giorgio Tavecchia
As a Data Strategy advisor with extensive experience in defining Enterprise Data Strategies and shaping Data Governance operating models, bridging business and IT to turn governance principles into measurable outcomes, I am part of the Strategy & Solution Design team at Quantyca, an Italian consultancy firm specialising in Data Management & AI.
In this role, I drive strategic initiatives, partnering with clients to navigate every phase of their journey, from initial Assessments to the successful implementation of Data Platforms tailored to deliver impactful and value-driven Data Products.
