Architectural Governance

Most governance concepts govern data; architectural governance governs the structure the data lives in. Which patterns are sanctioned, what each zone may and may not contain, how layers connect, what a "source access view" or "integration object" must look like — these are architectural rules, and without active governance they erode one pragmatic exception at a time until the platform is an archaeology site of abandoned conventions. The MDDE mechanism is to make the architecture rules part of the model world rather than a slide deck. When architectural patterns are encoded as templates and constraints — the stance of model-driven data architecture — the generator physically cannot emit an artifact that violates the zone rules, and model-level checks can flag a design that puts business logic in the wrong layer before anything is built. Decisions still need human judgment; architectural decision records capture the judgment, and the encoded rules enforce its outcome. This is also how architecture escapes the ivory tower: instead of architects policing compliance by review, the standards are executable and ambient, and the architects' time goes into evolving the patterns rather than defending them.