Re: RM of [Organizational] Data

mountain man wrote:
> The issue of the ownership of data is possibly worth exploring.
> Here we are restricting consideration to data held in a database.
>
> Using the following list of roles associated with any database
> > ==================================
> > DATABASE SYSTEMS ROLE-TYPES
> > ==================================
> >
> > --------------- Internal to the organisation:
> > I01 - business owner(s)
> > I02 - business executives and managers
> > I03 - general organisation work-groups/end-users
> > I04 - DBA (for SQL-DBMS)
> > I05 - IT manager
> > I06 - internal programmers
> > I07 - specialised development teams
> > I08 - Operations & help desk personnel
>
> > --------------- External to the organisation:
> > E01 - contractors and consultants (in any roles defined above)
> > E02 - contract programmers (or software house(s))
> > E03 - consultants and suppliers (of selected RDBMS software)
> > E04 - consultants and suppliers (of other software & hardware)
> > E05 - business, management and financial consultants
> > E06 - consultants in Models of Data
>
>
> All other roles apart from I01 (buiness owner(s)) are what
> might be termed custodians (of varying degrees) of the data,
> whereas the actual ownership of the data resolves to the
> owner of the organisation. Any diasagreements here?
>
>
> Consequently, implicit in any model of the data should be
> the understanding that the data ultimately belongs to the
> business owner.

To be precise, the data are owned by an "organization" (or individual as you mention below) -- not every organization is a business. Additionally, this is the organization who owns the data we are referring to (thus making it true by definition) and not necessarily the licensee of a database tool or the disk on which the data are stored. In other words, one organization might host a database of another organization's data.

> Thus, implied in the phrase "RM of the data" is the
> expanded form "RM of organisational data",

or "model of an organization's data".

> because
> data is always associated with an organisation (treating
> an individual as a minimal organisation) without
> exception.

Agreed.

>
> Do you agree with this assessment?

Sure, with the variations on your terms above. Where are you headed with this? What pops into my mind is the point that data and the associated model of the data are not separate from their use. There is not some ultimate model of data (as some might claim of "the relational model" of said data), but models that help organizations do their work. I'm curious where you are going with this. Cheers! --dawn

>
> Pete Brown
> Falls Creek
> Oz
> www.mountainman.com.au
Received on Sat Apr 16 2005 - 21:42:47 CEST