Book excerpt: The projects tackled by the software development industry have grown in scale and complexity. Costs are increasing along with the number of developers. Power bills for distributed projects have reached the point where optimisations pay literal dividends. Over the last 10 years, a software development movement has gained traction, a movement founded in games development. The limited resources and complexity of the software and hardware needed to ship modern game titles demanded a different approach. Data-oriented design is inspired by high-performance computing techniques, database design, and functional programming values. It provides a practical methodology that reduces complexity while improving performance of both your development team and your product. Understand the goal, understand the data, understand the hardware, develop the solution. This book presents foundations and principles helping to build a deeper understanding of data-oriented design. It provides instruction on the thought processes involved when considering data as the primary detail of any project.