Data Governance and Data Stewardship Drive Successful Glossaries and Dictionaries

That comes down to how companies implement Data Governance and apply it through Data Stewards.” Businesses Own Glossaries and IT Owns Data Dictionaries In addition to grasping Data Governance and Data Stewardship, managers need to understand the major differences, highlighted by Seiner, between a business glossary and a data dictionary..He quoted Nicola Askham: “The business creates, maintains, and owns the business glossaries..Information Technology (IT) or the people that own the systems take on responsibility for data dictionaries..So, the differences between the two has to do with who’s taking care of it, and who’s maintaining it, and who the Stewards are of that metadata.” Expanding further, he cited Lowell Fryman: “The prime directive of the business glossary is to eliminate semantic confusion across the enterprise..This means each business term within the business glossary needs a unique name, a single definition, a single value set, a single set of business rules, an authoritative source..This requires defining terminology used by the business..There may be multiple usages, but often those usages don’t conflict with the single definition in the business glossary.” In contrast: A data dictionary is created for specific purpose (e.g. to document a specific set of data within an application, Data Warehouse or Data Lake)..While business terminology focused, said Seiner, “data dictionaries link these concepts specifically to the metadata about the data or the information in the catalog.” Collecting or connecting business glossary terminology to data dictionary information may happen, and “a data dictionary typically has a business definition in it..But IT has the responsibility to put it there.” Seiner concluded from his analysis that business must be involved in glossary and dictionary development (the second of Bob’s secrets)..Given Seiner’s background on dictionaries versus glossaries, he moved into his four recommendations..Four Secrets of Successful Business Glossaries Data Dictionaries 1..Formally Govern the Contents “Have a plan that can be demonstrated and include specific details, such as who will collect the information, what is the process and level of commitment within the organization.. More details

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