Master Data Management (MDM) has been a problem since the first customer management systems were designed. I remember maintaining a Broadbase/Kana system that utilized a 'deduping' process to unify multiple customer attributes into a single unique customer identifer. Back then the process was cumbersome, unreliable, and generally messy. Though Analysis Services provides a Unified Dimension Model (UDM) that supposedly provides a single view of your data, it still requires a clean relational data source. Garbage in... Garbage out.
If we get accepted to the Technology Preview for MDM, I will see if MS has solved this problem with Microsoft MDM, or if this is just another BI/Data Management tool to add to the MS stack that seems to be getting more crowded every day.
Within OLAP data, hierarchies are a key feature, and keeping them clean and up to date can be tough. One of the core problems with our last project was trying to understand how to best map and consolidate this chart of accounts into a single model from multiple sources.
Perhaps this does the trick?
For example, one of the things that most impressed us about the Stratature product is that they do a better job than just about anybody we have seen at managing hierarchies. When we talked to our internal IT people they said they were buying a copy of Stratature +EDM primarily for its hierarchy management capabilities because they found many people were spending a significant amount of time managing hierarchies in spreadsheets on their desktops and this not only lead to lots of duplication of effort but in some case could be error-prone if the wrong spreadsheet was used.
This information lead to quite a few statements that Stratature was only a hierarchy management system. Stratature is a very fully-featured MDM hub and hierarchy management – while it’s cool – it only a small part of what it does. Going back to the whispering analogy, this is like starting with a statement that I bought a pair of shoes because they had really cool laces and ending up with I bought a pair of shoe laces.
Source: Have Data Will Travel
Speaking of shoes, my wife got me a pair of North Face Endurus XCR BOAs last January on our LA vacation in Beverly Hills. The coolest thing about them? No laces to do up.
I read about them in a Wired article about Dean Karnazes on the plane to LA, and I thought they sounded amazing. Dean's story is truly inspirational too. It got me motivated to start running... or at least to get the gear for when I decide to.
(I did walk over 200 blocks last weekend in New York, and I followed Dean's secrets to success (sleeping less, eating junk food and pushing your body to the point of death). Not sure that I'll go running any 50 state marathons any time soon though.)
To tighten the shoes, you turn a knob on the back similar to a ski boot. To loosen, you pull the knob. People tend to turn their heads to try and figure out what the heck you are doing with your clicking shoes, until I tell them the laces are stainless steel. Yes they're geeky, but at least they're sports-geeky.
It still appears to be a V1 product. There are some glaring defects that I was a bit bothered about, though I haven't bothered to call the company about them. After about 1 month, the rubber washer on the back dial on the back broke, making turning the knob a bit harder on the fingers. These things are no good with pants, as they catch annoyingly on them.
A few days ago, I noticed that the tensioner on the back started to skip as if it was stripped. For the most expensive shoes I have ever owned, I am getting the same experience I would expect with a high-performance British race car - low reliability.
My fault for believing I would become an Ultra Marathon man like Dean Karnazes, just by stepping in his shoes. They are really comfortable though, they're a conversation piece, and they never come undone.
And since he's #27 on the list of Time's World's 100 Most Influential People, I shouldn't feel too bad. Is it the shoes, Dean?
So yes, I did end up buying a pair of really cool laces wrapped in a shoe.
