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Brian Parish (IData CEO/Founder, Chief Product Officer)

Data Intelligence

  • Data Governance Framework

    • review, approval, consensus, engaging experts, steward, human curation, workflows

  • Data Catalog and Data Intelligence Content

    • content capture, inventory documentation, tech catalog, automation, and/or rapid entry

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“Data dictionary” is functional-forward, which is really a business glossary. Within it should be the technical definitions (how to interpret data model)

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Why do you need a business glossary?

Use cases

  • Agreeing on what full-time employee means

  • What is an at-risk client and how do we calculate it?

  • Pulling the current mailing address from the CRM and/or the data warehouse?

  • Report listing customer satisfaction for licensed customers by product and by number of years licensed.

  • How do we get others to know about and use the same rules and calculations for the model for calculating at-risk clients

  • How many undergraduate English faculty members are at your institution?

Writing business glossary definitions are very difficult.

Value of engaging with your business glossary

  • Consumption of info/data

    • Where is the data coming from

    • Answer questions on the meaning/source or calculation of data items

  • Requesting info and data deliverables

    • develop a common language and reference for communicating specific data needs with your analysts/developers

  • Creation/dev of data deliverables

    • using common language with requestor

    • reference existing definitions to reduce rework

    • adding new definitions

  • Data doc and curation - stewards and SMEs

    • authoring/reviewing/approving definition as needed for curation or creation of data deliverables

The business glossary should be referenced citation.

Glossary contents

  • glossary name

  • functional definition

  • technical definitions (related data systems)

  • Ownership - define related domains and functional areas - who approves/reviews/authors definitions

  • synonyms/common names

    • synonym another name for a definition - FTE and full time employment

    • common names - student connection to full time student

  • Policy attributes - security classification, privacy status, access rules - associate with glossary terms

  • Quality attributes - valid values - is it required? is there a range for this?

  • Reference data - reference data lists maintained separately

  • Source - where did this definition come from? state, fed, vendor, accreditation

  • version/status - this version is the currently approved version. What constitutes a new version?

  • History/comments

  • Usage - related content

Best practices

  • Names should be as specific as possible

    • Start Date vs Employee Original Hire Date

  • No data system or db specific names - system agnostic

  • Favor common names where applicable

    • easy to find by most people, use synonyms to help with search

  • The name must be unique across all glossary names

  • Include relevant context/source in name

    • salary vs US federal income

  • Specificity is critical

    • functional def should fully define the term avoiding any hidden assumptions

    • not and and all criteria, restrictions, scoping, and exceptions

    • functional definitions should provide enough specificity to inform a complete technical definition

    • functional definition should be agnostic to the data systems

  • Glossary definitions are connected/related

    • use links/references to basic terms for more specific terms

    • anticipate adverse event is more specific context for an adverse event

    • use links or pointers

    • related glossary definitions become valuable emergent content - may spawn more definitions

Technical definitions

  • Purpose

  • if you have multiple data systems where this element can be retrieved or calculated you can specify each of them

  • guidance can be narrative, code, or visual (mapping)

  • specify the relationship to time

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