How to centrally manage enterprise data definitions in your data mangement projects?

by Jan 21, 2015

One of the key issues in a Data Warehouse, Master Data Management or BI project is the lack of a centralized and easily accessible Data Definition or Metadata Repository.  Mostly, business users are using word and excel documents placed on a shared folder. Everybody is aware that the maintenance, stewardship and accessibility of metadata in a project not to mention in an enterprise are daunting tasks. Embarcadero TEAM SERVER provides the best data modeling tool I know on the market to bridge the gap between Business and IT and help the data governance efforts.

a)      Glossaries: Hierarchical glossaries allow authors and owners to define a set of terms based on projects, business areas and organizational levels

b)      Terms: These are the precise business data definitions of the business entities and data elements in contrast to the It Developer like definitions. The attributes of the objects can be customized according to the end user needs.

c)       Stewardship: Ownerships can be defined, added or deleted for any glossary or term.

d)      Relationships: Business terms are related to either terms, glossaries or other data elements like Table and Entity or Column Attribute objects defined in the enterprise and application data models as well as data sources from other operational data sources.

e)      Collaboration: End users are able to use social networking capabilities like: follow, likes, share, discussions and comments on any glossary, term or other defined objects. Each user has a “Facebook” like home page.

f)       Streams: Changes and additions to the objects are all documented and can be viewed by followers. Followers can setup how they can be notified on changes.

g)      Repository: All objects can be maintained and accessed centrally via any web browser even from your home. Permissions define the level of access and the privileges to be an author or a reader.

h)      Integration: TEAM SERVER can be easily integrated to any kind of third party tool using REST API. Metadata defined in TEAM SERVER can be viewed inline in your intranet or extranet websites as well as development and administration tools. This helps you to generate alerts and protect your data across the whole organization.

If you want to see how it works, visit the page: