No vendor lock-in
Your metadata lives as plain JSON files in your own repository. Your templates use open-source Handlebars. Nothing is trapped inside ADL — no proprietary database, no special tools required to read or edit your design.
Why this matters
The history of data tooling is a history of expensive escapes. Teams commit to a vendor's modeling tool, build years of design metadata inside it, and then face a brutal choice when the vendor's pricing, direction, or technology no longer fits: rebuild from scratch in something else, or stay where you are because the cost of leaving is unbearable. The metadata you've authored — your team's hard-won understanding of the business — is held hostage.
Your design metadata is the most valuable artefact your data team produces. It encodes your business: how concepts relate, what counts as a customer, how transactions roll up. Locking it inside a tool's database means locking your business's design inside that tool's commercial future.
How ADL delivers
Three concrete decisions, all visible in the repository on day one:
- Metadata as plain JSON files in your repo. Every Data Object, Data Item, Mapping, Connection, Classification, and Convention is a file you can open in VS Code, diff in git, read with any JSON parser. No proprietary binary format. No vendor's database to query. The schema is open source.
- Templates in open-source Handlebars. The same Handlebars language used by mail merge, GitHub READMEs, and countless other tools. If ADL ever stops being the right tool for you, the templates you wrote still work — anywhere a Handlebars renderer runs.
- 100% client-side. ADL runs in your browser. Your metadata stays on your local machine, in the folder you point at, in your version control. No server-side database holds your IP. No backend service is required for ADL to function.
What ships today
- Open-source schema. The Data Solution Automation Metadata Schema on GitHub. Inspect the C# source; read the XML doc comments; submit issues; fork it if you need to.
- Open-source template engine. Handlebars (handlebarsjs.com). Decades of community tooling, examples, and longevity behind it.
- Read the philosophy — Agnostic philosophy on the blog explains the design intent.