DataFlux

The Gap, once the darling of the 16-39 year old set — never mind Wall Street retail analysts — recently announced the sudden closing of its nascent and highly-touted Forth and Towne chain. Forth and Towne had been geared to a different demographic: upscale professional women in the 35-55 year old demographic who wanted a stylish spin on workplace wear. - Read the rest of this entry »

You know, I have never been happy with the standard definition of metadata. If you ask the question, the standard answer is "data about data." Yes, that is pretty much what metadata is, but as a definition it doesn't give you a clue about what this data is or what it is about, or even what data is. - Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently asked a question via the "Ask the Expert" form on my company's web page: Why should an organization not rely only on ROI to select projects? The problem with ROI is not the calculation of the expectation when proposing a project - it is whether there is any effort to assess the return as the project moves forward. - Read the rest of this entry »

You know what? I always start data modeling before I profile the data. Yep, I do! Don’t tell anyone, but I like to start mapping and documenting relationships right up front in the data model. Then I go prove it with profiling! Based on a conceptual understanding of the data I can pick what data stores should be profiled together, and organize the data assessment process. - Read the rest of this entry »

Master data is an interesting question (although I am certainly not couching this very interesting opening statement in the form of a question), since it causes no end of troubles in terms of definition. I, however, am not going to delve deeply in this morass, leaving it to my betters to define, and instead will offer a simplistic definition. - Read the rest of this entry »

More and more people across business and IT are realizing the importance of data governance. Whether the decision is to begin managing data as a corporate asset, or more tactical — to begin an MDM or CDI program the right way — data governance represents the policy making and decision rights around enterprise data. It’s ambitious, necessary for most companies with multiple organizations sharing the same data, and it’s harder than it looks. - Read the rest of this entry »

So, I was at a client’s office the other day and lo and behold what did I find, but a lack of standards and rules across the enterprise. Was I surprised? Actually, no! It is not unusual for a company to have no data management governance or practice. - Read the rest of this entry »

Why not? An organization can’t really function optimally unless every part of the organization leverages the same data standards and rules. Without consistent standards and rules, an organization will have difficulty delivering consistent results, whether these results concern its operations or its customers. - Read the rest of this entry »

The Wilshire DAMA International Symposium has come and gone and it was a content-rich and fun-filled extravaganza. In fact there was SO much meaty stuff I couldn’t get to it all, but here are some of what I thought were highlights: - Read the rest of this entry »

I just got back from the annual DAMA International Symposium and Wilshire Meta Data Conference in Boston. This is one of the most interesting conferences for data management professionals during the year, mostly because it provides a great combination of knowledge sharing sessions among a practitioner audience. I might say that the set of presentations could be grouped into these different areas: - Read the rest of this entry »