Data engineering for data science: two sides of the same coin

Abstract

A de facto technological standard of data science is based on notebooks (e.g., Jupyter), which provide an integrated environment to execute data workflows in different languages. However, from a data engineering point of view, this approach is typically inefficient and unsafe, as most of the data science languages process data locally, i.e., in workstations with limited memory, and store data in files. Thus, this approach neglects the benefits brought by over 40 years of R&D in the area of data engineering, i.e., advanced database technologies and data management techniques. In this paper, we advocate for a standardized data engineering approach for data science and we present a layered architecture for a data processing pipeline (DPP). This architecture provides a comprehensive conceptual view of DPPs, which next enables the semi-automation of the logical and physical designs of such DPPs.