Enabling Reuse for Data-Sharing Pipelines in Federated Environments

Abstract

Data mesh architectures enable decentralized data sharing through domain-owned data products, but supporting diverse consumers in federated settings often requires customized data-sharing pipelines. As the number of consumers grows, this leads to a proliferation of pipelines, increasing design and maintenance complexity. We observe that such pipelines frequently exhibit substantial structural overlap. In this paper, we argue that reuse should serve as a guiding principle to address this challenge. We define reuse in data-sharing pipelines as the systematic use of existing data assets and transformation logic across pipelines, and identify reuse opportunities at both design time and runtime. We analyze the associated challenges and outline a reuse-oriented design approach, supported by a reference architecture. A preliminary evaluation demonstrates the potential of reuse to reduce redundancy and improve manageability, providing a pathway toward more scalable and sustainable federated data sharing.