Reviewing a proposal
How to read a proposal from a Datapace agent: the change, the evidence, the affected objects, the risk, and what approving or rejecting records.
Where proposals come from
A proposal is drafted by one of the agents on the confirmed graph, or raised by a person through Datapace. Either way it arrives in the same shape and waits in the same queue for the approver policy names.
Reading the evidence
A proposal should be decidable without opening another tool. Read it in this order:
- The change. One sentence: what will be different afterwards.
- The affected objects. Which databases, which tables, which entities in the graph. If the list is longer than you expected, that is the first question to ask.
- The evidence. The signals the agent read: the usage figures behind a right-sizing, the plan shape behind an index, the join counts behind a mapping. Every figure points back to the graph.
- The risk, as the agent reads it. Reversible or not, production or not, whose dashboards depend on the affected objects.
If the evidence does not support the change on its own, the proposal is not ready, whoever drafted it.
Blast radius
The graph is what makes the blast radius visible. Because lineage is on the graph, a proposal to drop an unused table shows which exports still read it; a proposal to change a measure's definition shows which dashboards report it. A proposal without that view is a guess about consequences.
Approving, rejecting, asking for more
Three outcomes, each recorded:
- Approve. The change proceeds within policy. Who approved and when goes to the ledger with the proposal.
- Reject. The proposal closes with the reason. The reason is on the record, and the agent does not raise the same proposal again on the same evidence.
- Ask for more. The proposal goes back with the question. The agent, or the person who raised it, answers with more evidence.
Policy decides who can do each of these for a given kind of change. See policy, approval, and audit.
What the ledger records
For every proposal, from draft to outcome: who drafted it, what it changed, on which database, the evidence, the approver's decision, and the outcome once the change landed and was verified. The record is the same whether the proposal came from an agent or from a person.