The most popular and comprehensive Open Source ECM platform
Let us know more
Data Virtualization Unifies Enterprise Data
Data fragmentation across repositories is a problem that plagues most companies and is a problem that has been around for almost as long as companies have been using computers. The source of the problem is the use of multiple repositories.
Unlike disk fragmentation, data fragmentation occurs when multiple repositories are used to track the elements of a single data set, something that is almost impossible to avoid, but a reality that often makes the process of getting a unified view of a data set very difficult. The use of multiple repositories leads to data being replicated across systems and there are often inconsistencies across the various repositories where the data is stored.
Master Data Management (MDM) tries to address this problem. The heart of the MDM solution is the idea of an agreed-to data dictionary of common terminology. MDM effectively creates a new repository, one that houses the company data dictionary. Company repositories need to be implemented to use the standard MDM data-naming conventions found in the MDM repository. A follow-on step is to then integrate communication channels for data updates between repositories to achieve data consistency. Implementing MDM can be very rewarding, but it is generally very expensive, and it is often is very high maintenance.
An alternative to MDM is Data Vitualization. The approach is very similar, but doesn’t attempt to dictate data naming conventions and it avoids the overhead of data synchronization. Rather than a data dictionary, data virtualization creates a map of the location and method for accessing a piece of data or content. Data architects create this map and identify which repository is a trusted source for the particular piece of data. Users of data virtualization then can view from a dashboard data aggregated from trusted data sources.
Data virtualization is great for when data needs to be aggregated across systems that have trusted data sources.
