--- title: Exploring schema evolution with ontology-driven propagation description: A data engineering approach that uses a plain-English ontology as a runtime access policy to handle schema evolution automatically. Instead of maintaining a... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/exploring-schema-evolution-with-ontology-driven-propagation-cgbc9bvdm twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Exploring schema evolution with ontology-driven propagation | daily.dev og:description: A data engineering approach that uses a plain-English ontology as a runtime access policy to handle schema evolution automatically. Instead of maintaining a... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/exploring-schema-evolution-with-ontology-driven-propagation-cgbc9bvdm og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/cGBC9BVDm.png og:image:alt: Exploring schema evolution with ontology-driven propagation og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Exploring schema evolution with ontology-driven propagation **[dltHub](https://daily.dev/sources/dlthub)** · 9 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A data engineering approach that uses a plain-English ontology as a runtime access policy to handle schema evolution automatically. Instead of maintaining a static column allowlist, the policy is written as natural-language rules (taxonomy + relationships), and an LLM applies those rules column-by-column using name patterns, data types, cardinality ratios, and value samples. The system handles ambiguous cases like high-cardinality text columns where names don't reveal PII — the LLM inspects sampled values to decide. Demonstrated on a fintech dataset with DuckDB and dlt, the approach correctly passed UUID-based user references while rejecting PII columns, with no code changes needed when new columns arrived. Limitations include numeric columns being treated as safe regardless of content, and no cross-column re-identification analysis. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Medium](https://daily.dev/posts/medium-ie9499vpq) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [LLMs and SQL](https://daily.dev/posts/llms-and-sql-znhlfhfzb) · LangChain · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Ontology driven Dimensional Modeling](https://daily.dev/posts/ontology-driven-dimensional-modeling-jkjpvwzta) · dltHub · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Your Data Model Is the Semantic Layer](https://daily.dev/posts/your-data-model-is-the-semantic-layer-ro8bktzht) · MotherDuck · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#data-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/data-engineering) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/exploring-schema-evolution-with-ontology-driven-propagation-cgbc9bvdm) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Exploring schema evolution with ontology-driven propagation","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/exploring-schema-evolution-with-ontology-driven-propagation-cgbc9bvdm","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/exploring-schema-evolution-with-ontology-driven-propagation-cgbc9bvdm"},"datePublished":"2026-05-13T08:54:07.002Z","dateModified":"2026-05-13T08:54:36.188Z","description":"A data engineering approach that uses a plain-English ontology as a runtime access policy to handle schema evolution automatically. 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