Prerequisite and dependency mapping

Problem

Future profiler capabilities — such as cross-column correlation detection, lineage-aware semantic typing, and multi-run profile comparison — each depend on foundational infrastructure that doesn't exist yet: a stable column identity system, a profile versioning scheme, a way to reference columns across tables, and possibly SQL lineage tracing. If these prerequisites aren't identified and mapped now, each future feature will independently discover and build its own partial version of the same foundation, leading to duplicated effort and inconsistent implementations. Mapping enabling dependencies while the architecture is still malleable reduces startup cost for future work and allows prerequisite components to be designed with multiple consumers in mind.

Context

• Future work on warehouse profiling, semantic inference, and analyst-facing inspect/context artifacts will fail or stall if its hidden dependencies stay implicit, so this task should make the enabling conditions visible before anyone commits implementation effort.
• The goal is to understand which technical, product, operational, or partner-side prerequisites gate the most important next bets.
• Expected touchpoints include dataface/core/inspect/, schema-context consumers, inspect docs, and core tests, adjacent workstream plans, external dependencies, and any architectural decisions that would constrain later options.

Possible Solutions

• A - Let each future initiative discover its own blockers as it starts: workable short term, but it creates repeated surprise and thrash.
• B - Recommended: produce a dependency map for the most important future directions: identify technical enablers, ownership gaps, sequencing constraints, and external dependencies up front.
• C - Treat everything as blocked until all possible prerequisites are solved: safe on paper, but too broad to be useful.

Plan

1. List the future directions most likely to matter for warehouse profiling, semantic inference, and analyst-facing inspect/context artifacts and enumerate the dependencies each one appears to require.
2. Group those dependencies into themes such as architecture, data/contracts, operations, design, or external approvals and identify likely owners.
3. Highlight the prerequisites that unlock multiple future paths and the ones that are too speculative to prioritize yet.
4. Turn the highest-value prerequisites into sequenced follow-up tasks or explicit decision points rather than leaving them buried in notes.

Implementation Progress

Review Feedback

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