DataFlux

I’ve seen several companies lately with what’s known as Bright Shiny Object syndrome. You can already imagine what this looks like: IT managers talking about Service Oriented Architecture but unable to identify their companies’ key business processes. IT staff researching MDM solutions before pinpointing the reference data most important to the business. Users proselytizing data governance, but in the meantime refusing to provide funding for data management. - Read the rest of this entry »

I am in San Francisco today, having just finished the second of three planned executive breakfast seminars hosted by the Business Intelligence Network and sponsored by DataFlux. Both I and Tony Fisher presented different aspects of initiating and building a data governance program, followed by an open conversation with the attendees about governance within their own organizational contexts. - Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, we were looking at some tables in an existing data warehouse. The objective was to find all tables with customer information, so we could construct a complete view of the customer across the company. We needed an integrated data model about customers. We discovered multiple tables that seemed to have customer data. So, I pulled out my trusty six shooter (profiling tool) and went to work! - Read the rest of this entry »

A number of our clients are currently investigating the idea of data governance, which (hopefully) seems to be the next great thing in data quality management. Coincidentally, these activities are taking place at the same time that I have been putting together a new white paper as well as preparing for a number of live events for DataFlux on Data Governance. - Read the rest of this entry »

I was working with a client on a design and process issue the other day. It seems they wanted to include a new associative table (resolves a many to many relationship) in an existing data model. - Read the rest of this entry »

It’s spring, and young men’s (and women’s) fancies turn to their budgets. (I know, you were hoping I was going to say “love,” but there’s plenty of that crap already on the Internet so what are you doing here?)

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The other day I was chatting with a Quality Assurance person to find out what (if anything) he needed from me to complete testing for phase one of the data integration project we are working on together. I found out that he usually uses SQL to create testing scenarios. The testing scenarios are run before the data is manipulated, and again after the data is manipulated. The tests are run on a known set of data, therefore keeping consistency in the data. I guess he didn’t really know that I was profiling the data and creating the data model prior to integration - Read the rest of this entry »

Master data management is the integration of multiple sources of master data (employee, customer, product, cost centers, etc.) from the entire enterprise. CDI (customer data integration) is considered a component of MDM. MDM does not include transactions, just dimensional or lookup data. - Read the rest of this entry »

How much extra data are you carrying around with you? And how much does it cost? I have always been curious about the costs associated with data redundancy, and the question becomes even more interesting as more master data management programs are initiated. - Read the rest of this entry »