AIMS

Rethinking the Lakehouse Silver Layer

A meaning-first approach to medallion architecture in the AI era: a thin silver layer, an ontology, and the AI agents that read it.

13 chapters · 101 min read · 65 pages

Third normal form and Data Vault wrote business meaning into the shape of the tables, because for decades only humans had to make sense of that meaning. AI changes that. Meaning can move out of the table shapes into an ontology the catalog holds. The silver layer can stay thin and keep the shape of its sources, and an AI agent can read that ontology to discover, propose and answer.

This book calls the approach AIMS: AI-ready, Meaning-first Silver. Model the meaning, preserve the source, and integrate by exception, only where a specific business requirement calls for it. That’s just enough modeling, every decision the methods demanded and none of the restructuring, with the platforms’ own guidance for silver on the book’s side.

Read chapters 1 to 3 if you decide what the silver layer should be, 4 to 8 if you build it (with 2 and 3 first, for the terms they lean on), 9 and 10 if somebody asks you what “AI-ready” means, and 11 in any case, because it ends the book on seven steps you can start on Monday. The appendix keeps every AIMS term and the reference tables in one place.

Brought to you by DeltaVault.

What is inside

The case for third normal form and Data Vault, kept honest: what each built to carry business meaning, and what it cost.

AIMS, short for AI-ready, Meaning-first Silver: one source-aligned table per source table, a business key you can read, and attributes defined once and mapped to every column that carries them.

Just enough modeling and integration by exception: every decision the methods demanded and none of the restructuring, with a shared key or a golden record built only where a specific business requirement calls for one.

A closing table in every chapter: the structural answer, what the agent reads, and yours to decide.

One worked example, an order system and a sales system, carried from the first chapter to the last.

Seven steps to a meaning layer you can start on Monday.