Operations contract.

Operations metadata tells dashboards and support processes how a table should be operated. ContractForge records this information; notification delivery remains external.

Complete example

YAML

_metadata:
  contract_version: 1.0.0

ownership:
  business_owner: crm-analytics
  technical_owner: data-engineering
  steward: data-governance
  support_group: data-platform
  escalation_group: data-platform-oncall
operations:
  criticality: high
  expected_frequency: daily
  freshness_sla_minutes: 180
  alert_on_failure: true
  alert_on_quality_fail: true
  runbook_url: https://example.com/runbooks/s_customers
  owners: [data-engineering]
  groups: [data-platform, data-governance]
  tags:
    domain: crm
    tier: curated

Python

from contractforge import ingest

result = ingest(
    source="main.raw.customers",
    catalog="main",
    target_schema="crm_curated",
    target_table="s_customers",
    mode="upsert",
    merge_keys=["customer_id"],
    operations={
        "ownership": {
            "business_owner": "crm-analytics",
            "technical_owner": "data-engineering",
            "steward": "data-governance",
            "support_group": "data-platform",
            "escalation_group": "data-platform-oncall",
        },
        "operations": {
            "criticality": "high",
            "expected_frequency": "daily",
            "freshness_sla_minutes": 180,
            "alert_on_failure": True,
            "alert_on_quality_fail": True,
            "runbook_url": "https://example.com/runbooks/s_customers",
            "owners": ["data-engineering"],
            "groups": ["data-platform", "data-governance"],
            "tags": {"domain": "crm", "tier": "curated"},
        },
    },
)

In bundle mode, the matching *.ingestion.yaml owns the target table. Keep target out of the operations file unless you intentionally want an explicit compatibility assertion.

Fields

Field	Type	Default	Use
_metadata	object		File metadata for audit and bundle checks.
target	object	optional	Optional compatibility check against the ingestion target.
ownership.business_owner	string | null	null	Business owner or accountable business group.
ownership.technical_owner	string | null	null	Technical owner or engineering group.
ownership.steward	string | null	null	Data steward or governance owner.
ownership.support_group	string | null	null	Primary support group.
ownership.escalation_group	string | null	null	Escalation group for incidents.
operations.criticality	low | medium | high | critical	null	Operational criticality.
operations.expected_frequency	hourly | daily | weekly | monthly | ad_hoc	null	Expected run cadence.
operations.freshness_sla_minutes	integer | null	null	Freshness SLA in minutes.
operations.alert_on_failure	boolean	false	Flag for external failure alerting.
operations.alert_on_quality_fail	boolean	false	Flag for external quality alerting.
operations.runbook_url	string | null	null	Runbook URL.
operations.owners	string | list[string]	[]	Additional owner identifiers.
operations.groups	string | list[string]	[]	Groups associated with the table or data product.
operations.tags	object[string,string]		Operational tags for dashboards and cost grouping.
criticality, expected_frequency, freshness_sla_minutes, alert_on_failure, alert_on_quality_fail, runbook_url, owners, groups, tags	same as nested	same	Flat aliases accepted for compact files. The nested operations.* form is clearer.