by Angela Guess

The 2012 NoSQL Now! Conference featured a number of excellent discussions surrounding NoSQL solutions, advancements, tools, and use cases. One such discussion was led by Josiah Carlson, Chief Architect of ChowNow Inc. Carlson’s presentation was titled Why and When You Should Use Redis. Redis is an in-memory data structure server that has grown in popularity over the last few years for a variety of reasons. Being faster than the majority of other available databases (over 300k ops/second have been measured on 4-year old hardware), offering a data model unique to Redis, and support for master/slave replication are just a few. From the author of Redis in Action by Manning Publications, this talk introduces what Redis is, what it does, and the types of operations it supports.

At ChowNow, Josiah Carlson builds and maintains an online ordering platform for restaurants. On the evenings and weekends when not spending time with his wife, Josiah works on Redis in Action, which has 6 of 12 chapters written and is available to read now. In the past, Josiah built a Twitter analytics platform and ad serving network for Ad.ly, where he also served as Chief Architect prior to ChowNow. Josiah also spent over a year and a half at YouTube/Google, helping with the home page, channels, and groups products. While finishing his Ph.D. in Computer Science Theory at UC Irvine, Josiah worked at Networks in Motion (now Telecommunication Systems) as a Senior Software Engineer, where he helped with the GPS navigation product, helping to ship the first cell phone GPS navigation system to include traffic-enabled navigation and traffic updates while driving.

by Angela Guess

As we gather together all of the insights from the most recent Enterprise Data World Conference in San Diego, there is still plenty to be learned from the previous year’s sessions. This video presentation by Mukta Bahl of Genentech and Sanjiv Ranjan of Simplify Enterprise discusses Secure Data Management in the Cloud. According to their introduction, the presentation introduces a Secure Data Management framework and defines, analyzes and evaluates its working principles and components. It provides a structure to answer questions like, Where are the data assets? How can these assets be protected and secured? Is accurate and current data being used to make business decisions? Is the right master data used for information integration with business partners? Can compliance with US, European, Canadian and Asia-Pacific data regulatory requirements be assured?

The presentation recommends a path forward for IT departments and walks through actionable data management and governance strategies that can be used to improve business data quality and mitigate security, compliance and privacy risk. Bahl and Ranjan also share the need to partner with key stakeholders like vendors, legal, etc to evaluate “what worked and what did not work,” and provide key takeaways and lessons learned.

by Angela Guess

If after leaving Enterprise Data World last week you’ve found yourself hungry for more great presentations, check out this video on Master Reference Data: Governance and Maintenance for Analytics and Operations. This presentation was given by John Biderman, the Information Architect of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, at last year’s EDW conference.

In his description of the presentation, Biderman writes, “Reference data is often the orphan child of Master Data Management, sometimes segregated from MDM entirely or assumed to come along for the ride as MDM strategies are implemented for other domains. But reference data is at the core of your enterprise semantics — it describes your business — and as such requires a holistic approach to its governance and mastering. Tools and processes need to be in place to harmonize reference data across the enterprise, since application systems tend to proliferate their own coding and classification schemes with varying but overlapping taxonomies.” This case study describes both a toolset and a governance model, developed first in the data warehouse space and now extended to the operational realm.

John Biderman has over 20 years of experience in application development, database modeling, systems integration, and enterprise information architecture. He has consulted to Fortune 500 clients in the US, UK, and Asia. At Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (a New England-based not-for-profit health plan) he is responsible for data architecture, data integration, logical data modeling, metadata capture, architecture standards and policies, data quality interventions, project guidance, and engaging the business in data stewardship processes.

by Angela Guess

As Enterprise Data World 2013 rolls along, those of us who couldn’t make it to the conference can still enjoy great content from last year’s event. This week’s video presentation comes from Dave McComb, President of Semantic Arts. His presentation last year was entitled Elegance: A New Approach to Enterprise Modeling. In his description, McComb wrote, “Many companies have become dismayed at the prospect of building and maintaining a comprehensive enterprise model. The sheer volume of meta data and the rate of change discourage all but the most stalwart, and overwhelm many who do undertake it.”

“But our experience gleaned from recent work with four large enterprises, and leveraging over a decade of work in the application of semantic technology, we’ve come up with a general approach that is reversing the tide,” McCOmb goes on. “We call it ‘Elegance’ and it involves focusing on similarity as well as difference. It eschews structure at the conceptual level. It centers on the capture and application of “enduring business themes;” those aspects of the model that will survive your next package implementation or outsourcing project unchanged. It relies on reuse of properties and attributes rather than indiscriminant multiplication.”

This talk describes Semantic Arts’ experience and outlines a methodology for practitioners to follow to achieve these kinds of reductions in complexity.

by Angela Guess

One of the many highlights from last year’s Enterprise Data World Conference was a case study presented by Christopher M Bradley, Chief Development Officer at IPL and Eldar Bjørge, Leading Advisor – Information Architecture at Statoil. Their presentation was entitled A Model Driven Data Governance Framework for MDM – A Case Study from StatOil. Statoil is an international energy company with operations in 42 countries and more than 35 years of experience from oil and gas production on the Norwegian continental shelf. With a Market capitalization of about $75 billion and over 30,000 employees, Statoil is the largest company on the Oslo Stock Market.

With Statoil’s International growth, it now operates producing oil and gas fields and is one of the world’s largest net sellers of crude oil and the second largest exporter of gas to Europe. As part of the internationalization program, a major challenge faced was how to effectively manage key Master Data across the global operation. The Data subject areas are not simply the “usual” suspects (Customer, Product etc), but included the technically complex Master Data necessary for operation of an Upstream Oil & Gas producer. This practical case study shows how Statoil:

• Made the business case for MDM
• Defined the Master Data Landscape
• Engaged with process owners and line of business executives
• Defined ownership, governance and stewardship responsibilities and introduced these into the global operation
• Socialized the program across the organization
• Developed and introduced a model driven governance framework
• Avoided the “Field of Dreams” approach to MDM by delivering “just in time” Master Data services to support the business portfolio program

by Angela Guess

The last Enterprise Data World Conference in San Diego featured a number of compelling talks, including the presentation given by Michael Blaha, a Consultant at Modelsoft Consulting Corp. Michael spoke about Data Modeling with the UML. Attendees of the presentation found the presentation to be “well informed” and thought that Michael provided a great “new perspective to think about.”

Describing the presentation, Michael explains, “The UML is a popular modeling notation for programmers, but it is little used by database developers. One reason is technical – the UML creators ignored databases. Another reason is that few UML tools support database design. Despite the flaws, the UML is effective for high-level conceptual data modeling. The UML notation avoids confusing database details, making it easier for business experts to understand data models. In addition, the suppression of details promotes deep thinking, such as the use of abstract patterns. The UML has multiple notations, of which one – the class model – pertains to databases. This talk explains the UML class model by comparison to the IE database notation.”

Since 1994 Michael Blaha has been a consultant and trainer in conceiving, architecting, modeling, designing, and tuning databases. He has worked with dozens of organizations around the world. Blaha has authored six U.S. patents, six books, and many articles. His most recent book is “Patterns of Data Modeling”. He received his doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis and is an alumnus of GE Global Research in Schenectady, New York.

by Angela Guess

At the last Enterprise Data World Conference, M. David Allen gave a sharp lightning session entitled, What Building Architecture Tells Us About Building IT Systems. Attendees commented that Allen, the Principal Database Technology Engineer at MITRE Corporation, gave “a great overview” of the history and features of XML as well as alternatives to XML. Though the session was only five minutes, attendees came out feeling that they had “learned a lot about current tools.”

M. David Allen is a Principal Engineer with the MITRE Corporation, focusing on data interoperability issues in federal government. Mr. Allen has over 10 years experience in many areas of data management. He co-authored “XML in Data Management”, and participates in Department of Defense information sharing “communities of interest” as well as IT policy work. Currently, Mr. Allen is working on MITRE sponsored research on data lineage and uncertainty and how it can be applied to the defense sector. In 2000, he started a data management services company focusing on text extraction, data quality, and ERP transition work. Mr. Allen holds an M.S. in Information Systems, which included thesis work on data management process maturity.

by Angela Guess

At last year’s Enterprise Data World conference in San Diego, John Friedrich gave an excellent presentation on metadata management. John is the Vice President of Partnerships at Meta Integration Technology, Inc. and his talk was titled The Big Picture of Metadata Management for Data Governance & Enterprise Architecture. In his description of the presentation, he states, “Too many pretty pictures of Enterprise Architecture (EA) diagrams have been designed from the top down perspective which unfortunately does not reflect the actual IT infrastructure. Similarly, too many Business Glossaries (BG) have been left empty or disconnected from the existing Data Modeling initiatives and the rest of the Enterprise Architecture.”

He continues, “Too many Data Governance (DG) initiatives have been pushed by idealistic IT managers (and the vendors themselves) as brand new initiatives rather than integrated with data standardization, Master Data Management (MDM), and of course Metadata Management (MM). The big picture must support both business users in their daily activities within the business applications or Business intelligences reports, and the IT engineers for the life cycle change management within their Data Modeling, Data Integration (DI/ETL), and Business Intelligence (BI) design and development tools.” Watch the video to learn more.

John Friedrich has been working in the Information Systems arena for over 20 years. Much of his work has been on the cutting edge of modern software development, metadata management, enterprise architecture development, and data and process standardization. He has numerous successful implementations at Fortune 500 and large Government organizations. John has presented these concepts at several DAMA and meta-data conferences.

by Angela Guess

Mark Uksusman, Senior Manager of Data Architecture at eBay gave a great presentation at last year’s Enterprise Data World Conference in San Diego, CA. The presentation, The eBay Metadata Management Global Directory Enables Agile Data Warehousing, explained the eBay approach of handling enterprise Metadata and how Metadata Management is supporting Enterprise Data Warehousing, BI and data mining for large databases. Uksusman discussed the eBay experience of using new technologies to support integration of Metadata tools with enterprise environment. Covered topics included: Integration of Technical and Business Metadata; Metadata Management as part of Data Stewardship; Self Service Analytics Platform and integration with Metadata Repository; Metadata tools that are speeding up eBay development process and reducing time to market; eBay Global Directory demo.

Mark Uksusman has more than 20 years’ of experience in IT management, business intelligence, product development, data governance, data architecture and data warehousing. Before joining eBay, Inc, he was a Vice President of Technology and Engineering for Loan Performance and Senior IT Manager of Information Management for Franklin Templeton Investments. Prior to Franklin Templeton, he served as principal consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He has also led IT teams at E-Forex, IDC, and IBS.

by Angela Guess

Dan McCreary led an excellent lightning session at last year’s Enterprise Data World Conference in San Diego. McCreary is a Principal at Kelly-McCreary & Associates and his session was titled What’s with All the Buzz for Canonical Messaging? In his description of the session, McCreary wrote, “In October 2011 a Google engineer, Steve Yegge, inadvertently made public an ‘epic post’ on his analysis of why Amazon has started to dominate in hosted web services. At its core is the policy promoted by Jeff Bezos that he would fire anyone for sharing data using non-published methods. We will look at the core events that triggered Amazon’s rise as a leader in the web services movement and need for the creation of corporate canonical messaging standards that emulates this trend.”

Dan McCreary has over 17 years of experience in the technology field and has a reputation as a respected technology strategist. He is the founder of Integrity Solutions, which was sold to Vance Opperman’s Key Technologies in 1998 and is now part of the WAM!NET Professional Services division. Dan’s career has taken him through the fields of solid state physics, computer chip design, supercomputing, working with Steve Jobs and NeXT Computer, and founding his own consulting firm in 1992. Dan has a strong reputation for writing and presenting technology topics to a broad audience of executives and managers. His topics have ranged from software development technologies to web marketing strategies.