Businesses rely on knowing their data to survive and grow. Metadata management and master data management (MDM) provide essential processes for organizations to gain this knowledge and succeed. As a result, both need to be managed well. However, the differences and intersections between metadata management vs. master data management are often complicated to disentangle for […]
Data Lineage Demystified
Trusting big data requires understanding its data lineage. Without data lineage, big data becomes synonymous with the last phrase in a game of telephone. The original data from the first person (e.g., “a guppy swims in a shark tank”) changes to something completely different when it ends with the last person (e.g., “The puppy that […]
Data Literacy Trends in 2023: Formalizing Programs
Data Literacy, the ability to explore, understand, and communicate with data, will significantly increase its role in organizations in 2023 and beyond. Companies will gravitate toward Data Literacy to get insights from big data and mobilize artificial intelligence (AI), a technology underlying a machine’s ability to learn from experience. Unfortunately, many businesses need to ramp up […]
What Is a Data Lake?
A data lake is an environment where a vast amount of data, of various types and structures, can be ingested, stored, assessed, and analyzed. Data lake technologies can scale to massive volumes of data, and combining datasets is easy with data stored in a relatively raw form. A data lake architecture can centralize data over distributed storage, providing a scalable, […]
Databases vs. Hadoop vs. Cloud Storage
How can an organization thrive in the 2020s, a changing and confusing time with significant Data Management demands and platform options such as data warehouses, Hadoop, and the cloud? Trying to save money by bandaging and using the same old Data Architecture ends up pushing data uphill, making it harder to use. Rethinking data usage, storage, and computation is […]
How to Influence Data Quality Through Data Stewardship
To get value from data, data stewards must understand business requirements and apply them. When business ambiguity arises about best serving data stakeholders, data stewards need to know how to find out this information and with whom to speak. Then these data trustees influence Data Quality for the better by aligning fit for purpose with business needs. Data stewards […]
Expanding Data Governance into the Future
Shortened time frames to leverage business insights and navigate data privacy and ethics call for the next generation of Data Governance (DG). This DG describes a collaborative, thoughtful, long-term framework consisting of processes managing trusted data assets across the organization. Kelle O’Neal, Founder, and CEO of First San Francisco Partners, sees a need to make firms […]
What Is Data Quality?
The Data Management Body of Knowledge (DMBoK) defines Data Quality (DQ) as “the planning, implementation, and control of activities that apply quality management techniques to data, in order to assure it is fit for consumption and meet the needs of data consumers.” Since expectations about Data Quality are not always verbalized and known, an ongoing […]
What Is Database Management?
Database Management allows a person to organize, store, and retrieve data from a computer. Database Management can also describe the data storage, operations, and security practices of a database administrator (DBA) throughout the life cycle of the data. Managing a database involves designing, implementing, and supporting stored data to maximize its value. Database Management Systems, […]
What Is Data Literacy?
Data literacy describes the ability to read, work with, analyze, and argue with data, according to Raul Bhargava and Catherine D’ignazio from MIT and Emerson College. Easy access to data sets is essential to exercise these skills. All employees in an organization involved with data-driven decisions should learn to think critically about the data they […]