What is data observability in modern data engineering?

Data observability is the ability to monitor, trace, and understand data health across pipelines.

Data observability extends traditional monitoring by focusing on data quality, freshness, distribution, lineage, and schema changes. It ensures that data pipelines are not just running, but producing correct and trustworthy outputs. It includes anomaly detection, schema drift detection, and pipeline failure diagnostics. Tools like Monte Carlo and OpenLineage help implement observability at scale.