One of the difficult aspects of Information Development is that organizations cannot “start over” – they need to fix the issues of the past. This means that the transition to a new model must incorporate a significant transition from the old world
Its capabilities could be grouped into 2 categories:
Things that can be done today, but typically through multiple products
- Can be used to define data models and interface schemas
- Provides GUI-based transformation mapping such as XML schema mapping or O-R mapping
- Is able to profile data and content to identify accuracy, consistency or integrity issues in a once-off or ongoing fashion
- Takes the direct outputs of profiling and incorporates these into a set of transformation rules
- Helps identify data-dependent business rules and classifies rule metadata
- Has an import utility to bring in common standards
New capabilities typically not seen in products today
- An ability to assign value to information based on its economic value within an organization
- Provides an information requirements gathering capability that includes drill down and traceability mapping are available across requirements
- Provides a data mastering model that shows overlaps of information assets across the enterprise and rules for its propagation
- Provides an ownership model to assign individual responsibility for different areas of the information architecture (e.g. data stewards, data owners, CIO)
- Has a compliance feature that can be run to check adherence to regulations and recommended best practices
- Provides a collaborative capability for users to jointly work together for better Information Governace
In summary, this product would be like an advanced profiling tool, enterprise architecture modelling tool and planning, budgeting and forecasting tool in one. It would be a major advantage to organizations on their path to Information Development.
Today’s solutions for Active Metadata Integration and Model Driven Development seem to provide the starting point for this next generation product. Smaller software firms such as MetaMatrix provided some visionary ideas to begin to move organizations to model driven Information Development. The bi-directional metadata repositories provided by the major players such as IBM and Informatica area a big step in the right direction. There is, however, a significant opportunity for a product that can fill the gap that exists today.
September 4th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Most organizations seems to have narrowed it down to two tools: MS Excel and Visio. Sure it’s spread across about 8,000 document and it is inconsistent, overlapping, impossible to find and mostly innacurate but at least everyone knows how to use the tool! The main challenge for metadata vendors is finding tools that people like using.
IBM and Informatica have both backed away from building enterprise metadata super powers. Informatica SuperGlue - the glue for all your corporate metadata, was rebranded to be an ETL add on product. IBM MetaStage - the enterprise metadata hub is gone, Unicorn the enterprise semantic metadata tool also gone, both replaced by the products on the Information Server that just tries to get data integration right.
The reasons for this are economic - 100% of large companies need to integration data but only about 1% are ready to tackle a corporate metadata repository. So the more profitable route is to sell ETL/EAI tools to 100% of the companies out there and make extra money with value added metadata tools that people will like using and to limit the scope of metadata imported to a manageable level.
September 4th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Hi Vincent,
Definitely agree with you on the pervasiveness of MS Excel and Visio - and the need to bring this content in - but I think it is also a big part of the problem. Every time I start any kind of enterprise initiative for DM, no one has any semblance of a current-state! Sometimes its OK at a project level but there tends to be little consistency across the organization.
As you say, part of the reason that people like using excel and visio (especially excel as its easy to manipulate). Cost is also a big factor (even if the tool is not that expensive). Therefore, I think the answer will likely either come from open source or as part of a suite offering
You are right on the mark on the drivers software companies. Metadata repositories seem to be in the same league as change control, testing - they don’t sell that well as an enterprise capability. In addition, there have been a number of enteprise metadata initiatives that have failed from a business perspective. (funding has once again been a big part of this)
My post talks about a single tool but its probably a mis-statement if we can stick with open and common standards. Unfortunately, there have been lots of issues with XMI and its implementation. I think this is a problem that must be solved, just as it has for other areas of software development that are just as complex.
As for the software vendors, do you seen this as a marketing shift or a complete architectural shift?