datavow 0.4.0

Trust Your Data. Know Why You Can't.

Open-source data contract enforcement for modern data teams.
Define contracts in YAML. Sync to dbt. Validate in CI. Block bad data before it reaches production.

Official ODCS Vendor — Listed on the Bitol registry alongside Data Contract CLI, Data Caterer, and DQC.ai.

The problem

89% of data teams report pain points with data modeling and ownership. Data contracts are the solution — but the tooling is fragmented:

• dbt tests → SQL only, no formal contract, no pre-ingestion validation
• Great Expectations → verbose Python, steep learning curve, no standard format
• Soda → good YAML checks, but no CI/CD gate, no stakeholder reporting, no ODCS
• Data Contract CLI → ODCS compatible, but no dbt sync, no scoring, no CI gate

DataVow covers the full lifecycle: define → sync dbt → validate → block → report. One tool. One standard.

Quick start

pip install datavow

# Initialize a project
datavow init my-project

# Define a contract
datavow define contracts/orders.yaml

# Validate data against contracts
datavow validate contracts/orders.yaml --source data/orders.csv

# Generate an HTML report
datavow report contracts/orders.yaml --source data/orders.csv --format html

# Run in CI mode (exit code 1 on critical violations)
datavow ci contracts/ --source data/

Key features

YAML-first contracts (ODCS v3.1 native)

Define schemas, quality rules, and SLAs in readable YAML. DataVow supports both its own format and native ODCS v3.1 contracts — auto-detected, no config needed.

apiVersion: datavow/v1
kind: DataContract
metadata:
  name: orders
  version: 1.0.0
  owner: data-team@company.com
  domain: sales

schema:
  type: table
  fields:
    - name: order_id
      type: integer
      required: true
      unique: true
    - name: customer_email
      type: string
      required: true
      pii: true

quality:
  rules:
    - name: no_negative_totals
      type: sql
      query: "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM {table} WHERE total_amount < 0"
      threshold: 0
      severity: CRITICAL

datavow dbt sync — the killer feature

One command generates dbt-native tests from your contracts. Works on every dbt adapter — no connector needed.

# Generate dbt tests from contracts
datavow dbt sync contracts/ --dbt-project-dir .

# Generates generic + singular tests from your contracts
# All tagged `datavow` for easy filtering

Vow Score — every validation renders a verdict

Vow Score = 100 - (20 × CRITICAL + 5 × WARNING + 1 × INFO)

  95-100  ✅ Vow Kept      — fully compliant, ship it
  80-94   ⚠️ Vow Strained  — action needed
  50-79   🔧 Vow Broken    — blocking issues
   0-49   ❌ Vow Shattered  — critical violations

CI pipeline gating

Block bad data automatically. No manual intervention.

GitHub Action (Marketplace):

- uses: ludovicschmetz-stack/datavow-action@v1
  with:
    contracts: contracts/
    source: data/
    fail-on: critical
    comment-on-pr: "true"

dbt on-run-end hook (datavow-dbt):

# dbt_project.yml
on-run-end:
  - "{{ datavow_summary() }}"

vars:
  datavow_fail_on: broken  # block pipeline on Vow Broken or worse

ODCS v3.1 — validate against the official standard

# Validate a contract against the ODCS v3.1 JSON Schema
datavow odcs check contracts/orders.yaml

# Convert ODCS native → DataVow format
datavow odcs convert contracts/orders-odcs.yaml -o contracts/orders.yaml

DataVow bundles the official ODCS v3.1.0 JSON Schema (2928 lines, Draft 2019-09). No other CLI tool does this.

Full command reference

Data sources

DataVow validates files and databases via DuckDB:

For cloud warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks), use datavow dbt sync — it generates dbt-native tests that run on your existing dbt adapter. No extra connector needed.

Built for your whole team

Architecture

┌─────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌─────────────┐
│  YAML       │    │   DataVow    │    │   Outputs   │
│  Contracts  │───▶│   Engine     │───▶│             │
│  (ODCS/DV)  │    │   (DuckDB)   │    │  ✅ Score   │
└─────────────┘    └──────┬───────┘    │  📊 Report  │
                          │            │  🚦 Exit 1  │
              ┌───────────┼──────┐     └─────────────┘
              ▼           ▼      ▼
          CSV/Parquet  PostgreSQL  dbt

Ecosystem

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

# Development setup
git clone https://github.com/ludovicschmetz-stack/datavow.git
cd datavow
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest  # 137 tests

License

Apache 2.0 — free forever. Use it, fork it, ship it.

Website · Documentation · PyPI · Issues