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In many companies, data warehouses are like the Roman Empire: vast, all encompassing, bringing order to chaos, with an influence that can often be felt across the entire organization.

In many companies, data warehouses are like the Roman Empire: vast, all encompassing, bringing order to chaos, with an influence that can often be felt across the entire organization.

There’s a plethora of discussion in the data warehousing world about master data management these days. The Data Warehousing Institute, one of the premier sources of all that is data warehouses, has a great poster (registration required) detailing some categories of MDM functions between MDM and data warehouse or BI functions.

However, I’ve heard some folks mash up these concepts.  Here’s what you should know.

All Roads Don’t Lead Directly to Rome

The system of roads is part of the legacy of the Roman Empire, as it enabled fast travel to the center of the city-state. Data warehouse and business intelligence tools are often the epicenter of data within a company.

Since so much structured data ends up in the data warehouse system, it’s easy to believe all data must flow directly there. Evan Levy of Baseline Consulting recently gave a great interview about the challenges of data warehouses in IT Business Edge.

Levy correctly points out that point-to-point integration from a myriad of different systems creates an system of overly complicated roads. Ensure you don’t tightly couple your overall data integration solely to your DW/BI tool, and consider an MDM solution as a stop along the road.

Istanbul, Not Constantinople

It wasn’t until 1930 that the name was changed with the Turkey Postal Service Law, but do you know what city Constantinople was originally built upon?  If the names don’t match up, it’s tough to deliver the mail in Turkey, or anywhere else.

Using your own matching logic in a DW or ETL solution just isn’t a good idea any more. The best MDM solutions have cracked this nut. And remember, for every entity you miss (person, business, product, etc), someone asks, “Where’s that other record? I know it’s here somewhere.” Users have to trust the data – otherwise, they won’t act quickly.

Don’t Chase What’s Gone

One of the categories listed within the TDWI poster is analytical MDM. This concept drove me crazy – the idea that a so-called “operational” MDM system, managing real-time transactions, somehow wasn’t appropriate for a DW/BI system.

Fortunately, Gartner has the same opinion in their MDM Hype Cycle earlier this year. Of the 15 different technologies, only one, Analytical MDM is labeled as "obsolete before plateau". The Roman Empire took a little longer to become obsolete.

Keep these ideas in mind as part of business intelligence or data warehouse initiatives, so you know where your data is. There’s no value in re-inventing the wheel (although the Roman did make improvements!)