Reference data is used to relate other information in a database. It standardizes how data elements are categorized, which is important because it provides context and uniformity to data classification. By establishing best practices, the data quality and integrity increases, integration is streamlined and data-sharing across teams is simplified.
Inefficient Data Governance
Many organizations use multiple data sources that are utilized by different applications. Misaligned management of data causes fragmentation and leads to inconsistent data referencing, which can cause inaccurate reporting, analysis, and inefficient operations.
Proper Reference Data Management
- Ability to Map Reference Data: An RDM solution should manage application-specific, industry-specific, use-case specific, new versions of and local adaptations. Relationships between referenced data and all its permutations should also be tracked and managed.
- Administration of Reference Data Types: A single data model can’t represent the many different types of reference data. Therefore, the data model needs to be extended to support new reference data and the new properties also need to be managed.
- Management and User Experience of Reference Data Sets: An RDM solution should provide users with an intuitive design that’s also flexible.
- Architecture/Performance: Due to the highly-related nature of reference data, semantic modeling can help document reference data with their complex connections to other domains across time.
- Hierarchy Management Over Sets of Reference Data: A hierarchical approach is important for reference data and should also be applied to values and relationships.
- Connectivity: An RDM solution should provide enough flexibility to provide the most accessibility for users, which includes preferred formatting.
- Import and Export: Importing and exporting reference data should be enabled in multiple formats.
- Versioning Support: Versioning and mapping should be used in conjunction with data lifecycle management.?
- Security and Access Control: RDM solution should implement user role-based security.
- End-to-end Lifecycle Management: An RDM solution should have a workflow to provide proper governance of reference data by involving a lifecycle management process.
