Mirza Dharani and Dyuti Patankar presented a session on their case study of working as data architects in implementing SOA services.
Their first tasks were to consolidate their logical and physical data models. As with many of these data model rationalization projects, the choosing of a common name for a variety of elements was difficult. This effort also involved creating common names for XML tags.
Also part of their "commonizing" of various data sources was examining and making consistent values of attributes. For instance, Gender Codes may be alpha in one system and numeric in others.
Their efforts also included establishing common derivations. The found that as time goes on, the complexity of their derived data increased. They observed that users have differing derivations for derived data with the same name. Part of the training they needed to provide included educating end users that these terms that had differing derivations would now be standardized -- so everyone who asked for a Contract Number would get only a contract number.
They also created common services for hierarchies by giving common codes to each level of the hierarchy, then providing services for retrieving those specific levels.
Again, another session that could have been a double session with all the questions everyone had!
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Impact of Service Oriented Architecture on Data Modeling: A Case Study
Mirza Dharani
Data/Integration Architect
Allstate Financial
Dyuti Patankar
Data Analyst
Allstate Financial
Thursday, March 20, 2008
08:30 AM - 09:30 AM
Level:
Intermediate
In an enterprise with multiple data sources resulting in an environment where multiple interpretations of similar meaning data exist, data modeling is a challenge. Supporting services adds to this challenge. We will discuss how data modeling was affected by service oriented architecture using a case study of building an operational data store and an operational data mart.
Attendees will learn:
• How to support service oriented architecture initiatives to provide common derivations and common hierarchies to multiple consumers such as integration, application development, and end-users
• How to enable common services through rationalization, common name space, and common codes in data modeling
• How to leverage and extend solutions into larger problem spaces
Mirza has over twenty years of experience in Information Technology. At Allstate Financial, he is the Data/Integration Architect on a wide variety of strategic projects. He has lead enterprise efforts to support service oriented architecture in modeling data sourced from multiple legacy systems.
Dyuti has over ten years of experience in Information Technology including data modeling and business intelligence. At Allstate Financial, she is actively involved in various strategic projects that focus on enhancing the business intelligence initiatives of the company. She is working on starting a Dimensional Modeling Community of Practice within the organization, which will serve as a forum to establish and share enterprise-wide best practices. Before starting at Allstate, she worked as a consultant on various BI projects involving data modeling, OLAP, scorecards, dashboards, and corporate performance management.