Through the development of an enterprise information management program, organizations can realize many business benefits and manage data as an asset. Introduction More and more companies are coming to the realization that an Enterprise Information / Data Management (EIM) initiative provides a critical foundation that is essential to meet today’s many business challenges. A fundamental asset of any organization is
There are many benefits to implementing surrogate keys in a dimensional model design for a data warehouse data model Introduction There are many reasons for implementing surrogate keys in Dimensional Models (enterprise data modeling) such as insulating dimensions from changes to source systems and enabling historical versioning of dimension members. However, query performance in the data warehouse is another primary
Using a data governance maturity model to assess and continually measure the performance of the data governance program can give any organization tactical and strategic benefits. Introduction Generally, data governance is a long-term strategic initiative, but data governance can also deliver short-term, tactical benefits. The need for both strategic and tactical approaches to data governance contributes to an organization’s confusion
Using a framework such as a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) brings many benefits to any organization, for any project or program. Introduction Would you eat in a restaurant that had not been inspected periodically by the local inspector? Of course, you would not – because you could not be sure that the restaurant followed the best sanitary practices as a
Data warehouse implementations are vulnerable to internal as well as external security threats. Follow these mitigating steps to reduce the risks. Introduction Security threats exist against your information resources, whether the systems are accessible through the Internet or buried deep within your internal network, available only to authorized users, including the enterprise data warehouse and related analytics systems. The increasing
Independent data marts cause many problems in data warehouse architecture; combining to result in numerous issues for business intelligence and analytics solutions. Introduction A severe disease has spread to epidemic proportions throughout our society. This disease is particularly dangerous as it effects are not readily identifiable at the time of infection. However if this condition goes untreated it can be
Creating and maintaining business and technical metadata definitions are two common data stewardship activities. Doing them well is essential to data stewardship success. Data stewards perform many common activities, including developing and maintaining data domain values, creating and managing business data rules, and supporting the data quality rules, validation and resolution processes. However, the most common activities performed by business
A data strategy can contribute to an organization’s information strategic plan, and arrange for the productive use of the data asset. Introduction A Chief Financial Officer (CFO) was approached by the CEO and asked for an accounting of the company’s financial assets. The CFO gave a vague response indicating a lack of knowledge of the corporate bank accounts, had little
Using a specialized data validity dimension in a data warehouse design can support data quality and analytics capabilities. Introduction While working on an Enterprise Data Warehouse for a state court system the issue of poor data quality in the source systems became apparent. Referential integrity was not strictly enforced and there was very little in the way of attribute level constraints. One
Customer data integration can be improved by using generic dimensional modeling techniques Introduction If you are undertaking a Customer Data Integration (CDI) or Customer Master Data Management (MDM) project as part of a dimensional modeling endeavor, how will you tackle the problem of how to store customer addresses? Using customer addresses for direct marketing, analysis of household penetration, customer retention
