Re: "Master Data Management?"

On Feb 8, 3:36 pm, TroyK <cs_tr..._at_juno.com> wrote:
> A new buzzword seems to have crept up on me when I wasn't looking --
> I'm seeing a lot about "master data management" (http://
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Data_Management) as somehow a different
> (or more specialized?) discipline than plain 'ole "data management".

Relax. It's nothing to worry about.

Suppose you're Wal*Mart. You have an internal inventory management system. Each product you sell has an SKU of some kind.

But you also have a metric crap-ton of suppliers. Each of them has their own internal inventory or production management system. Each of them has an SKU of some kind for the products they sell.

How is Wal*Mart to "know" that when an ACME Shoes invoice says "PartId: 1234, PartName: Shoes, black, size 17" it needs to tell its accounts payable system about a "SKU: 4321. Product: Footwear. Black Color. Size 17 Adult"? The answer is you have an application residing somewhere -- think of it as a kind of web site a computer can look up -- that other systems get to ask and get back "authoritative" answers to this kind of question. Wal*Mart probably has a lot of systems that want answers to these kinds of question (What's our Vendor Code for "ACME Shoes"?, etc).

It's not a theory thing. Or a new kind of tool. There's nothing particularly technically profound. It's just an application written in response to an emerging need. Received on Tue Feb 12 2008 - 20:49:49 CET