It is often said that data is the language of business today, which if true also means we are in big trouble. The number of unique data models that have been developed and deployed each represent unique dialects with custom taxonomies and ontologies. It is the lack of standardization and proliferation of custom data models that is complicating our applications and integrated business systems. They are driving up the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) to prohibitively high levels.
This is the typical scenario in many businesses. Often there is a legitimate need to connect one application to another, and subsequently a third. All three have differing data models, so it is not a simple plug-and-play operation. Some form of translation utility is needed so a mapping is created and implemented adding two new applications/processes to manage. What had been three applications to manage has grown to five. The next change to be implemented requires more effort to maintain. Read more »
The other night on NOVA, there was a fascinating special; Cracking the Mayan Code. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mayacode/ What made it so fascinating, and relevant to this blog, was the fact the key to unlocking the written Mayan language was the standard method they used for recording events. Their standard to recording numbers and ultimately timestamps provided the key needed to unravel the remainder of the glyphs.
I could relate to the archeologists scouring the ancient sites and what was recorded in stone, since as a report analyst I’ve often scratched my head trying to decipher the meaning the data record on hard drives in the data center. While modern data analysts have the advantage of knowing that a field is a date/time data type, the meaning and definition of the rest of the data may remain a mystery due to the lack of a data dictionary, or due to inconsistencies within the data itself. The lack of standardization prevents the analyst from decoding the meaning in the data. Read more »
Having met with some of our data management peers in health care, I started to wonder whether, or not, we would accept medical care that was not governed. As a society, we have come to expect that our medical practitioners adhere to certain standards. In that profession, a prescribed dose of medication relies upon quality controls from the point of origin to the point of delivery. This system helps to build our confidence in the goods and services we obtain from medical practitioners.
Why then, do businesses resist the efforts to instill good governance practices? Over time there have been numerous instances where a governance model has proven to be necessary for the common good. Governance over the medical profession is one such area. Recently in the news, compliance with aviation safety governance is another example. The government is beginning to push the data management profession in that direction through SOX, Basel, HIPAA and the like, yet the resistance continues. Read more »
Data Governance Fundamentals, Data Management, Data Modeling, Metadata | TomJ April 30, 2008 | 
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