NULLs

Let’s Talk Data Modeling, Privacy, Data Breaches and the Role of Data Architects 28 Feb

Tomorrow, Thursday 28 February at 2;00PM EST, I’ll be moderating a panel of expert data modelers as part of my Big Challenges in Data Modeling Series at Dataversity.net .  In this month’s webinar, we’ll be debating the role of data architects in how we can best support business processes related to data privacy, data security and compliance.  We’ll start by talking about recent data breaches and privacy issues.

One of the more contentious debates I have on projects is whether or not data modelers and architects should even have a role in these processes.

Joining me for this month’s panel are:

• Eva Smith ( @datadeva | blog ) Director of Information Technology at Edmonds Community College (EdCC) where she oversees college IT functions and serves on the IT Commission for the Washington State Community and Technical College system.  Eva also volunteers for DAMA, International on the Editorial Board for the Data Management Body of Knowledge (DMBOK) Version 1, and as DAMA-I liaison to the Institute for Certification of Computing Professionals (ICCP).
• Loretta Mahon Smith( @silverdata ) is currently the IBM Global Business Services, Business Analytics & Optimization Lead for the Data Modeling Center of Excellence. She has an extensive background in the financial services industry and is also a long time DAMA volunteer.
• Peggy Schlesinger is a well-respected Master Enterprise Architect with Intel Corporation with a long history in Master Data Management.  She is currently working on the Semantic Definition for the enterprise to improve and accelerate Business Intelligence, and is moving the environment toward Self-Service Business Intelligence.
• YOU

As always, our last panelist is YOU! Unlike many webinars, we run these as highly-interactive events.  We have a formal Q&A for when you want to ask a question of the panel, but we also have a peer-to-peer chat open so that you can discuss what you hearing in real time.  We try to keep track of what’s going on in the chat so that we can comment and address the points being raised there.  I love this feature and hope you will join us to be part of this event.

If you have a topic or question you’d like us to address, leave a comment below and we’ll try to work it in.

Also, if you are unable to make the webinar, you can register now anyway and listen to the recording later.  So get registered now.

5 Naughty and Nice Ways to Love Your Data

It’s Valentine’s Day evening in North America.  I’m guessing that means that you and a loved one are waiting for a table at your favourite ChiBeeFridayGarden^TM.  Hopefully you’re not sitting in a crowded bar drinking sugary sweet margaritas that never came anywhere near a lime or real tequila.  But if you are, that also means you’re probably munching on some free chips and salsa.  Bueno.

As you know, I’m a data advocate…a data evangelist, even.  That means I want you to take care of your sweet snookums of data that you’ve entered into a commitment to love, honour and obey until the end of time.  Or at least until that next recruiter call comes.

So while working flying across Canada in my cubicle in the sky, I came up with these 5 tips for ensuring that your data feels loved, safe and warm.

1. Try some constraints.  I’m tired of seeing systems with no foreign key (FK) constraints or indexes on the data.  Vendors are especially straight-laced with their “we do all that enforcement in the application” answers as to why they don’t want to constrain their data.  That’s a subject of a future post. However, too many database designs lack even the most basic data quality rules.  There’s a whole lot of things we data professionals know about what makes for good (or good enough data).  Enforcing those rules as close as possible to the data is the best way to protect to that data.  To make it feel loved because it’s safe.

2. Be free. Don’t worry about backups.  What? No backups? No, that’s not what I said.  Don’t worry about backups; worry about restores.  You can have a perfect backup strategy in place and still not be able to restore because you’ve never tested that critical part of the process.  Sure, to restore there has to be a backup first, but too many people set that up and don’t realize that there’s another process out there deleting the backups, or destroying the tapes, or worse.  While you are at it, make sure you are monitoring the backups to see if they are actually working. Regular (and hopefully automated) restore testing will quickly point out failures in the backup and the restore strategy.

3. Put your data on a pedestal. I support systems with data that is more than a hundred years old. Over those decades, that data has been passed around between databases, systems, spreadsheets…well, you know how that works. Every professional who put their hands on that data had an opportunity to nurture it or to turn it into the broken, barely human data crying in a relation’s arms. There are certain data practices that make data less usable, less accurate and less strong. That weakness in the data translates in a general weakness in the entire system. That then translates into business weaknesses. Data last much longer than code. If you are optimizing database designs for the code, you may be harming it in a way that it can never love you back. Love it even on fast and agile projects.  Just enough design doesn’t mean no design; it means just enough to love it right.

4. Get familiar your data. Almost to the point of stalking it. You need to not only understand the structure of a database, but also what data is in it.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone reverse engineer table and column names, then use only that information to analyze what data is contained in the database.  Big mistake.  Want to be surprised?  Go look at a bunch of columns called Notes or Description or Address Line 4 and see what you find.  I’d bet you a bag of naughty candy hearts that you’re going to find a brand new set of data that few people knew was held in that database.  You might even find credit card data, tax identifiers or insulting customer comments buried there.  I’ve seen all of that.   Data profiling is something you need to do for the life of a data structure.  Misuse of data structures happens more often than you think.

5. Cozy up with your team members. If you are data modeling or designing databases and you aren’t physically next to the people working with those designs, you’re missing out on a hundred opportunities a day to answer their questions, overhear their debates about the difference between Department and Division and generally not providing support for the project you delivered to them.  What? Those people work thousands of miles away?  You need to build a long distance relationships via Skype or GoToMeeting with these people.  You might even need to answer their questions in the middle of the night.  Just like in real life relationships.  The key is to send a message of availability and wiliness to help.  I’m pretty sure I’d better stop this analogy here, but you know what I mean.  You say your boss pulls you off a project as soon as version one of the data model is done and puts you on another one right away?  Well, there’s a name for that type of a boss.  I’ll stop here, too.

Your data really isn’t your data.  It belongs to your business users and some of it to customers.  When you don’t love your data enough, it knows.  And others will know, too.  So spend some time tomorrow ensuring that your data is loved, safe and warm.  It will do the same for you and your team.

Data Modeling is Dead? Join Us 24 Jan 2PM EST to Discuss

During this month’s Big Challenges in Data Modeling we’ll be talking about the state of data modeling. 

Last month Tom LaRock (@sqlrockstar | blog) wrote a post Data Modeling is Dead, Long Live Data Modeling. 

Data modeling is dead. It is a product of an era that has passed; that of corporate silos that created their own versions of software to suit their own needs.

That is no longer the world in which we live. That era was one that had high costs associated with building and maintaining a database of customers.

Today’s era is one where you can subscribe to Salesforce.com for just a few dollars a day. You can decide for yourself to run a new report. How much did that same report cost in the old era? How long would it take for IT to deliver that report? That’s why businesses today are using such services, because it reduces time and costs.

You need to read the whole post to get his position, but I find that his take on the state of data modeling is common in the IT world.  I posted a link to his blog post to a LinkedIn group and there was an extensive discussion.

I’ve invited Tom to join a real-world data architect and me to talk the current state of data modeling and what the future holds for data architects. 

This Month’s Panelists

Thomas LaRock

• Thomas LaRock is a seasoned IT professional with over a decade of technical and management experience. Currently serving as a Technical Evangelist for Confio Software, Thomas has progressed through several roles in his career including programmer, analyst, and DBA. Thomas holds a MS degree in Mathematics from Washington State University and is a member of the Usability Professional’s Association. Thomas currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) and is a SQL Server MCM as well as MVP. Thomas can also be found blogging at http://thomaslarock.com and is the author of DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA (http://dbasurvivor.com).

Gabriel Tanase

• Gabriel Tanase is a Data Architect currently with a mid-size business consulting organization. He has accumulated some tough years of ordinary real-life data modeling experience and the not-unheard-of distinction of having taught it academically before really practicing. He is currently specializing in keeping everybody else in the project happy while quietly enforcing information meaning and integrity.

This webinar is free to attend, but you must register.  It officially starts at 2PM EST, but you can join us at 1:45 when we start our prep. We’ll be taking questions via the Q&A and we offer a real time chat so that you can be part of the conversation, too. 

Data Modeling and Metadata–A Great Match

Craig Mullins ( @craigmullins | blog ) has written a post about how data modeling supports metadata management and therefore better IT systems.  You may know Craig through his evangelism about DB2 and Database Administration.

So how do you ensure that you are exploiting the metadata you are collecting to the fullest, possible extent? How do you make sure that your metadata is easily accessible and effectively used across your organization? Well, this is where modeling comes in to play. Modeling is important to metadata management.

Effective communication is at the heart of the metadata value proposition. Data managers must be able to interpret the data coming into their organization and then provide a roadmap to everyone else so that they too can reach their destination. Modeling adds value to metadata management much the same way it does for data itself — by serving as a  standardized language, easily understood by everyone from business users to application developers to DBAs.

It’s always good to see people on the more technical side of data management (databases and technology) appreciate and support data modeling efforts. You should read his whole post, then leave him a comment.

Join me 29 Nov @ 4PM EST for Big Challenges in Data Modeling Panel

I’ve recently taken over director moderator duties for the monthly Big Challenges in Data Modeling webinar hosted by Dataversity.net.  Former moderator, Graeme Simsion, has moved on to exciting things in the writing and film industry, so I’m stepping up to take on the role of agent provocateur in engaging the data community to chat and debate about industry and academic trends in the data world.

Big Challenges in Data Modeling #BCDModeling

In tomorrow’s panel, well be chatting about a soon to be released research paper based on a survey of data professionals.  This paper covers:

• Role of Agile/SCRUM on data modeling projects
• Data Modeling tool features
• Data Architecture staffing
• Big Data trends
• ..and more.

Joining me will be a great cast of characters team of experts in data management as we chat about the paper and how these things have changed over the years.

• Chris Bradley, IPL @inforacer
• Donna Burbank, CA Technologies, @donnaburbank
• David Dichmann, SAP (Sybase), @ddichmann
• Missy Whittmann, American Family Insurance … and real life data architect

We run a fun and engaging webinar where audience members can chat with each other and the panellists, so you get to be part of the insight and fun, too.  So make sure you join a bit early so that we can pre-chat.

You need to register to attend.