Databricks DQX: How Proskale Turns Data Quality Expectations into Executable Contracts for the AI-Powered Lakehouse
Introduction Every data team has the same scar tissue. A critical dashboard breaks because a field that was “never null” suddenly is. An ML model drifts because a categorical value changed casing. An auditor asks how you proved revenue completeness, and the answer is a PDF from last quarter. These failures happen because data quality is still treated as a report you run after the pipeline finishes. In 2026, that model is obsolete. Pipelines stream, decisions are automated, and AI agents act on data without asking a human. Databricks DQX, or Data Quality eXpectations, moves quality into the pipeline where it belongs. Databricks DQX lets you declare the rules data must meet and enforce them natively in Delta Live Tables, Structured Streaming, and Spark. No sidecar systems, no sampling, no late surprises. At Proskale, we implement Databricks DQX as data contracts between producers and consumers. We codify business rules, wire them into CI/CD, and connect pass rates to SLAs. This blog expl...