by Angela Guess
Michael Blechar recently discussed some common issues surrounding metadata management. He writes, “While those in most organizations I talk to want one comprehensive metadata management solution, they generally understand that the issues surrounding an enterprise-wide set of shared metadata is beyond their scope, funding and governance abilities to implement. Hence most metadata management efforts – especially initially – tend to focus on smaller-scoped domains like data warehousing, master data management or the publishing and management of software services in registries or repositories.”
Blechar continues, “When it comes to selecting the most appropriate domain to ‘start on’, I find that organizations frequently do not consider which further ‘sub-scope’ to go after, or the issues surrounding the source and integration of metadata for that sub-scope.”
He gives an example: “Let’s say that we have selected master data management (MDM) as our primary scope of metadata management to address. First, we need to know which subset of the domain is to be addressed first. Is it general customer or product metadata or some other sub-domain of MDM? And, is it to document and manage all the metadata for that sub-domain (customer contracts, customers orders, etc) or just some subset of scope within that sub-domain (like customer name and address metadata to the exclusion of contracts and orders)?”
photo credit: bob stephan
