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March 25, 2005
Metadata Quality
In the world of Metadata, the most important dimension is quality. Data are of high quality if they are fit for their intended uses by customers in operations, decision making, and planning (Juran, 2002). Thomas Redman (2003) indicates that "fitness for use" involves "freedom from defects" (such as being incorrect, out of date, or improperly defined) and possessing the "desired features" (such as being relevant to the task at hand, comprehensive, and at the proper level of detail). Total Quality Management (TQM) defines quality as consistently meeting customer expectations and needs. The single best way to ensure data quality is to supply data that is used by people who are knowledgeable of what the data should look like, are able to recognize when it is not correct, know what would be correct, and are able to provide feedback that will resolve the discrepancies. The essential factors are customer usage and customer feedback. Monitoring the usage of metadata and provisions for feedback to improve data content and requirements provides a solid foundation for Metadata quality management
Posted by Todd at March 25, 2005 1:10 PM
Comments
Todd,
I've been thinking recently about "data quality" vs. "metadata quality." As you may know, a knock on EII is that it does not provide the data cleansing of ETL.
I think a more important issue, however, is metadata quality. The real problem is making sure you present the right information in the first place. This requires good metadata for the view design process. I'd be curious as to your thoughts.
Thanks,
Tim
Posted by: Tim Matthews at August 9, 2005 10:34 PM
I agree with you Tim if you limit the scope of metadata to the Data Warehouse where the field to field mapping is complete. Unfortunately, at the enterprise level field to field mapping is impossible with millions of connections. Some vendors are using tools that map to a single source and then perform dual transformations but the amount of effort is enormous and expensive. What happens when you move Metadata to other assets like web services, schemas, components, web pages, system definitions, message structures, interface formats, communications, etc. We are getting closer to ETL type integration for many other assets but I think EII can get you 80%. And in the grand scheme of things, that aint bad.
Posted by: RTodd at August 10, 2005 1:07 PM