Data Contract Templates

A collection of ready-to-use data contract templates across industries and use cases. Clone a template, adapt it to your dataset, and run it against your data.

Browse all templates with a searchable UI at executabledatacontrats.com.

What is a data contract?

A data contract is a YAML file that defines what a dataset should look like — its schema, column types, allowed values, freshness, row counts, and any other quality rule. When executed against real data, each rule is verified and produces a pass or fail result.

A minimal contract looks like this:

dataset: my_datasource/my_database/my_schema/orders

checks:
  - schema:
      allow_extra_columns: false
  - row_count:
      threshold:
        must_be_greater_than: 0

columns:
  - name: order_id
    data_type: varchar
    checks:
      - missing:
      - duplicate:
  - name: total
    data_type: decimal
    checks:
      - invalid:
          valid_min: 0

Available templates

Template	Description
general_data_contract.yml	Starter template with common check types: schema, row count, missing/duplicate, valid values, and aggregates
finance_transactions_data_contract.yml	Financial transactions — UUID validation, ISO-4217 currency, freshness, and cross-field checks (amount sign must match transaction type)
finance_bcbs239_data_contract.yml	BCBS 239 regulatory compliance — referential integrity, LEI format validation, reconciliation between exposure and accounting datasets
retail_inventory_levels_data_contract.yml	Inventory levels — arithmetic consistency (available = on_hand - reserved), non-negative stock, freshness with configurable threshold
retail_oders_data_contract.yml	Retail orders — quantity validation, payment method enumeration, country code format, freshness
tech_subscriptions_data_contract.yml	SaaS subscriptions — lifecycle consistency (cancelled subs must have end dates, active subs can't have past end dates), billing status enumeration

Running a contract

1. Install Soda

# Install the package for your data source
pip install soda-postgres    # or soda-snowflake, soda-bigquery, soda-databricks, soda-duckdb, etc.

2. Configure your data source

Create a ds_config.yml with your connection details:

type: postgres
name: my_datasource
connection:
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  user: my_user
  password: ${env.POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
  database: my_database

The name field must match the first segment of the dataset path in your contract. Environment variables are supported via ${env.VARIABLE_NAME}.

3. Adapt and verify

Copy a template, update the dataset path and column definitions to match your table, then run:

# Validate contract syntax (no database connection needed)
soda contract test --contract my_contract.yml

# Run the contract against live data
soda contract verify -ds ds_config.yml -c my_contract.yml

See the Soda CLI reference and contract language reference for the full set of check types and options.

Contributing a template

1. Fork this repo and create a branch.
2. Add your contract as <industry>_<use_case>_data_contract.yml (e.g., healthcare_patient_records_data_contract.yml).
3. Use datasource/database/schema/<table_name> as the dataset path so it stays generic.
4. Include a variety of check types that are relevant to the use case — the goal is to teach people the syntax through realistic examples.
5. Open a pull request with a short description of the use case and why it's useful.