Master Data Management

[mark.tan]

Hi All,

I think more organizations (with disparate systems) are beginning to realize the need to address the issue of having a standardize master data repository before embarking on a DW project. Different vendors have different ideas about implementing MDM (esp. with SOA). I am just wondering while there is definitely a need to have common repository to house all these master data, but is it advisable to implement them as dimensional tables? Or in a more convensional method to store this master tables (outside DW)?

Anyone with such experiences, please enlightened my thoughts...

Cheer,
Mark

[BoxesAndLines]

You don't need a MDM repository to do a data warehouse. You don't need a MDM repository period. The vast majority of companies manage to make large sums of profit each year with redundant data stores stuffed full of inconsistent data. I would not implement a dimensional data structure to support a MDM repository. The MDM access paths are more like the typical OLTP access paths than a standard dimensional query. You certainly can source a dimension from a MDM repository though. Life in the data warehouse would clearly be easier with a MDM repository in place.