By Karen Lopez on Thursday, February 14, 2008 5:45 PM

Data Quality Assessment (amazon affiliate link)

I've just started reading Data Quality Assessment by Arkady Maydanchik. From the back cover blurb:

DATA QUALITY ASSESSMENT is a must read for anyone who needs to understand, correct, or prevent data quality issues in their organization. Skipping theory and focusing purely on what is practical and what works, this text contains a proven approach to identifying, warehousing, and analyzing data errors. Master techniques in data profiling and gathering metadata, designing data quality rules, organizing rule and error catalogues, and constructing the dimensional data quality scorecard.

Sounds intriguing.  I'm a fan of theory though, because I think it helps professionals better react to real world situations, so I'll have to see what the publisher means by "skipping theory".

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, February 14, 2008 4:30 PM

Quote of the day:
I am certain there is too much certainty in the world. - Michael Crichton

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, February 14, 2008 4:05 PM

I'm happy to announce that Gartner has published a research note on Industry Standard Data Models (ISDM) and InfoAdvisors' services in helping clients use them effectively.  If you are attending DAMA, contact me (karen@infoadvisors.com) for information on how to get a complimentary copy of this case study.

This research note, InfoAdvisors: Modeling Beyond a Blank Sheet, authored by Michael Blechar, focuses on how organizations can benefit from adopting ISDMs.  He discusses how InfoAdvisors provides insights into the benefits, risks and best practices involved with implementing industry-standard data models and patterns.

If your organization is a Gartner subscriber, you can download the note for free by visiting Gartner.com and searching for InfoAdvisors or using the research ID: G00154734.

Otherwise, you can purchase the note from the Gartner website.

As a reminder, I will be speaking on a similar topic at the upcoming DAMA LA meeting on 25 February 2008.  See our event listings for more information.

By Karen Lopez on Friday, February 08, 2008 6:24 PM

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:44 AM

A valued colleague of mine, David Waxberg, sent me a link to a discussion on the history of the term blob.  I had always understood that BLOB stood for Binary Large Object.  According to some database pioneers, this just isn't the case.

According to Ann Harrison and Jim Starkey (who developed Interbase), the term blob started out as more of a yadda, yadda, yadda type phrase that was used to describe a new DBMS concept.   Marketing and management, though, felt that they could not use the term blob and called the functionality segmented strings.  Then marketing accepted the term blob, but did not want to say that it was just a filler term conscripted to be a serious DBMS functionality, so they came up with Basic Large Object as the meaning, turning blob into a  backronym.

Then the Informix guys used the same concepts and described a blob as a Binary Large Object, yet another backcronym.

" For the trivia inclined: Blob don't stand for nothin'. It isn't an
acronym for "basic large object" or "binary large object". A blob is
the thing that ate Cincinnatti, Cleveland, or whatever.

The precise chain of events that lead to the creation of the sublime
blob is:

1. Barry Rubinson, my boss at DEC, was prone to wandering around
muttering "blobs, blobs, we gotta have blobs." When I asked
what a blob was, he pointed out that I was the architect and
that was my job.

2. Marooned in Colorado Springs (where Barry lived) because of a
snow storm in Massachusetts (where I lived), and unable to
derive the grand theory of transaction consistency, I invented
the blob instead. Ah ha! A concept to hang on a wonder name!"

Now you know more about BLOBs than you did before.

Look for my next post on the birth of a relational DBMS...

 

 

 

 

By Karen Lopez on Monday, January 28, 2008 2:14 PM

Rajan Chandras has authored a review of Embarcadero's EA/Studio 1.5 for Intelligent Enterprise.

"EA/Studio Business Modeler is an entry-level but professional-looking business process modeling tool from Embarcadero Technologies, a company better known for its data modeling and database administration products, ER/Studio and DBArtisan, respectively. Now in its second major release — following an inaugural v1.0 release and v1.1 upgrade last year — EA/Studio is a mid-tier solution positioned above products like Visio, which are essentially diagramming tools, and below advanced process modeling tools such as IDS Scheer's ARIS Design Platform, Mega's Mega Process, ITP Commerce's Process Modeler for Visio, and MetaStorm's ProVision (acquired through Proforma). A free EA/Studio Community Edition released earlier this month gives you a taste of the tool's core business process modeling capabilities, but it lacks some of the helpful reporting and analysis capabilities of the $970 full version.

EA/Studio is aimed at organizations midway up the process modeling maturity curve: Organizations that would like to go beyond basic visual depiction of process flows (e.g. Visio diagrams) and towards more organized process design and metadata management as well as integrated process/data modeling, yet are not ready for a full-featured process modeling and execution environment."

What I found most interesting in the review was his mention of the EA/Studio Community Edition release.  I was not aware of this "free" edition.  Look for a future post on this edition here.

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, January 17, 2008 5:13 PM

Sun Acquires Open Source Developer

From Channel Insider

 

NEW YORK (Reuters)—Sun Microsystems Inc said on Wednesday it will buy open source developer MySQL AB for about $1 billion, allowing it to expand into an estimated $15 billion database market.

Sun also reported preliminary results for its fiscal second quarter, saying it expected higher revenue and profit compared with the year-earlier period.

Sun said it will pay about $800 million in cash in exchange for all of MySQL stock and assume about $200 million in options as part of the deal.

The company said MySQL's open source database is widely used across operating systems, hardware vendors and applications, and are expected to bring new markets for Sun's systems, middleware and other technologies.

By Karen Lopez on Tuesday, January 08, 2008 2:11 PM

Using Universal Data Models to Jumpstart Your Data Modeling Effort

15 January 2008 / 11 AM EST

In general, two thirds of an organization’s data consists of common constructs that are applicable to most organizations and the other one third has been customized for their own needs. This means that most data modeling efforts are often recreating what has already been built many times before. Not only that, but many data modeling efforts often lead to internal battles that can delay or even bring a project to a halt. Luckily, there are resources and tools that can help you jumpstart a new project and avoid "re-inventing the wheel" every time a new system needs to be developed or re-architected.

 

Register

Don't miss hearing first-hand from modeling expert and best selling author of The Data Model Resource Book series, Len Silverston, and ER/Studio Product Manager, Jason Tiret, as they walk through how you can save both time and money on data modeling and data warehouse projects using data model templates. This webinar will include how world-class organizations are using data model templates to:

• Jumpstart data modeling efforts
• Reduce development time and costs on new projects
• Facilitate standardization of existing data models

If you're evaluating data modeling tools and data model templates, or already have a project in place, Using Universal Data Models to Jumpstart Your Data Modeling Effort will help you understand what leading organizations are doing to realize the most ROI from their data modeling investments.

SPACE IS LIMITED

By Karen Lopez on Friday, December 21, 2007 12:46 PM

A while back I posted a blog entry about Microsoft's feature addition to Visual Studio - Entities (or ADO Entity Data Model).  In that post, I complained that the "redefining" of the term Entity Data Model was going to lead to even more confusion on development projects.

Today I watched an online video of using Visual Studio to work with Entity Data Model functions .  While it didn't help assuage my misgivings about calling this feature Entity Data Modeling, it did help me understand what Microsoft means by data modeling.  For now, it appears to be database modeling via reverse engineering of databases.

One of the things I did note, though, was that I preferred some of the graphical presentation features of the actual entities.  The gradient shading and the drop shadows gave the models more visual appeal than most tools I work with.  I know that these sorts of features come with a performance price, but I still think they were more visually pleasing.

I'm thinking of giving Visual Studio a try to see how these graphical features come out in printing and other presentations.

What do you think of them?

 

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, December 19, 2007 3:33 PM

The CA Modeling Product Line Community (PLC) is looking for volunteers to serve on the PLC Modeling Board.  It is my understanding that you must be a current user of CA ERwin products and be employed by a non-partner organization.

Now through Janurary 31, 2008, we are seeking nominations from CA ERwin users in this community, who are interested in serving as a member of the PLC Board. The primary role of the board is to act as the voice of the global user community by providing leadership in supporting members interests and liasing with CA, and to support and encourage growth of local user groups.

These PLC board positions are being offered to you, as CA ERwin users. All members of the PLC Modeling community will vote for the candidates of their choice.

PLC governance is owned by officers of the board & it's members. For your PLC, the board will be representing the entire virtual product line community member base, including local user groups and users who do not have local groups in their area. This governing body will be responsible for these types of functions.

Develops and monitors budget
Has fiduciary responsibility of the PLC
Maintain communication channel with CA's Customer Program office, local user groups, PLC members, and the modeling tool development lab.

Facilitate the prioritization and voting of certain product enhancement requests upport local user group activities as seen appropriate by the PLC Board Serving a 2 year term, the PLC Board will need to have a minimum of 3 officers; maximum of 6 officers, as deemed necessary to govern your PLC.

In addition to being able to give back to the global CA ERwin user community, I'd think that being a member of the board would have great networking benefits -- with other ERwin user organizations and with CA staff and product management.

For more information or to nominate yourself, visit http://causergroups.ca.com/usergroups/News.aspx?ID=397 .