Did you have a programme in your IT organisation to build 'the single view' of data for some subject area, say Customer or a Product? These types of porgrammes have different names Book of Records, System of Records, Single version of Truth and so on. Have you experienced the agony one goes thru to try and create a single view, acceptable to different view points that exists in an organisation? There always will be some view point, which would want some data at different level of granularity or different level of currency or both, from rest of the view points.
No I am not talking of CDI/MDM. The problem I am talking about is about defining what 'the single view' of a particular subject area should look like? Even after you decide how your single view of subject area should look like, there are further challenges of collecting, reconciling, cleansing and hosting data. Thats what CDI/MDM predominantly addresses. But who helps you in deciding what the right single view of particular subject area? Frankly, nobody.
So isn't a single view of a subject area, a misnomer? Let me make a logical argument. even when we build an IT system, we start with a nice third normal form data model. But the non-functional requirements, such as performance, scalability makes us abandon the third normal form data model and introduce level of redundancy, what we poularly call denormalisation. And we live with it.
Why not take a similar approach to data, at enterprise level. Lets accept the fact that, the different view points are not always reconcillable, and the single view of subject area is impossible to achieve. Why not build a fit for purpose single view of subject area. And there can be as many single views as there are different purposes. Some of the purposes may collaborate with each other and can reuse each others single views. So in reality there can be less number of single views of subject areas than the number of purposes. Ofcourse, you need to create mechanisms to keep these different single views in synchronisation. Well why create one level of indirection, why not go to multiple view underlying this single view directly? May be using a service facade? Well I have answered these questions in one of my earlier posts . so you would need these fit for purpose subject area single views. You can use MDM/CDI technolgies to build them.
And if you dont believe me then I have a bridge to sell you ;-)
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Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Is single version of truth achievable?
Did you have a programme in your IT organisation to build 'the single view' of data for some subject area, say Customer or a Product? These types of porgrammes have different names Book of Records, System of Records, Single version of Truth and so on. Have you experienced the agony one goes thru to try and create a single view, acceptable to different view points that exists in an organisation? There always will be some view point, which would want some data at different level of granularity or different level of currency or both, from rest of the view points.
No I am not talking of CDI/MDM. The problem I am talking about is about defining what 'the single view' of a particular subject area should look like? Even after you decide how your single view of subject area should look like, there are further challenges of collecting, reconciling, cleansing and hosting data. Thats what CDI/MDM predominantly addresses. But who helps you in deciding what the right single view of particular subject area? Frankly, nobody.
So isn't a single view of a subject area, a misnomer? Let me make a logical argument. even when we build an IT system, we start with a nice third normal form data model. But the non-functional requirements, such as performance, scalability makes us abandon the third normal form data model and introduce level of redundancy, what we poularly call denormalisation. And we live with it.
Why not take a similar approach to data, at enterprise level. Lets accept the fact that, the different view points are not always reconcillable, and the single view of subject area is impossible to achieve. Why not build a fit for purpose single view of subject area. And there can be as many single views as there are different purposes. Some of the purposes may collaborate with each other and can reuse each others single views. So in reality there can be less number of single views of subject areas than the number of purposes. Ofcourse, you need to create mechanisms to keep these different single views in synchronisation. Well why create one level of indirection, why not go to multiple view underlying this single view directly? May be using a service facade? Well I have answered these questions in one of my earlier posts . so you would need these fit for purpose subject area single views. You can use MDM/CDI technolgies to build them.
And if you dont believe me then I have a bridge to sell you ;-)
No I am not talking of CDI/MDM. The problem I am talking about is about defining what 'the single view' of a particular subject area should look like? Even after you decide how your single view of subject area should look like, there are further challenges of collecting, reconciling, cleansing and hosting data. Thats what CDI/MDM predominantly addresses. But who helps you in deciding what the right single view of particular subject area? Frankly, nobody.
So isn't a single view of a subject area, a misnomer? Let me make a logical argument. even when we build an IT system, we start with a nice third normal form data model. But the non-functional requirements, such as performance, scalability makes us abandon the third normal form data model and introduce level of redundancy, what we poularly call denormalisation. And we live with it.
Why not take a similar approach to data, at enterprise level. Lets accept the fact that, the different view points are not always reconcillable, and the single view of subject area is impossible to achieve. Why not build a fit for purpose single view of subject area. And there can be as many single views as there are different purposes. Some of the purposes may collaborate with each other and can reuse each others single views. So in reality there can be less number of single views of subject areas than the number of purposes. Ofcourse, you need to create mechanisms to keep these different single views in synchronisation. Well why create one level of indirection, why not go to multiple view underlying this single view directly? May be using a service facade? Well I have answered these questions in one of my earlier posts . so you would need these fit for purpose subject area single views. You can use MDM/CDI technolgies to build them.
And if you dont believe me then I have a bridge to sell you ;-)
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