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Message Posted: Fri, 07 Sep 2001 @ 13:40:29 GMT

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I think David, Neil and Roland area all on track with the idea of 'dirty data'. We should also remember who 'data' belongs to - the organization, not individuals, not contractors, and certainly not IT. It should be viewed as one of the top organizational resources just like $$'s, inventory, personnel, etc. If an organization does not treat data as a major resource, then one might be a bit suspicious of how they do business in general. Remember computers (and Teradata more specifically) has made data available to the 'organization' more so now than ever before. Putting blame on "who's fault" it is and pointing fingers will not solve anything.

As David indicated 'management' (i.e. those individuals who control and represent an organization) are the ones that need to deal with how information (i.e. in its raw form of data) should be treated. In those organizations where the realization that data (i.e. information in its processed form) is a key resource and the source of any competitive advantage over their competition (yes that applies to Government organizations too) will take the time and spend the $$'s to 'fix' the applications that collect/generate the data so that they can have the best information available to drive their organizations forward.

One customer of mine actually uses the Teradata DW to 'audit' their main operational systems. If any piece of data is identified as being 'dirty' when it gets to the DW, then action is taken to seek out the 'offending' application, program, edit procedure, etc, and fix it. I personally believe that it is a lot quicker to do this and get it right from source than it would be to introduce an independent process to 'fix' it (and keep maintaining that transition logic) on its way to the DW database.

Just my $0.02 for what it is worth today!

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