SQLstream provides its Master Data Management (MDM) solution to help enterprises implement effective, manageable and scalable MDM solutions. Our key components enable enterprises to create a comprehensive MDM solution, complementing the many meta data management and MDM repository solutions available on the market.

Master Data Definition

"Master Data" means the enterprise-spanning set of data arising or processed within all of the enterprise's primary business entities and functions. For example, in sales it includes customer identities, order numbers, order details, order value, and so on. In supply chain applications, master data includes product identifiers and details, suppliers, components, inventory, costs, and so forth. Analogous data sets support marketing, manufacturing, support, accounting, and each of the other business functions. (Master data always includes the corresponding data hierarchies and aggregation breakdowns.)

Unfortunately all these data, though critical to the enterprise, are often scattered across any number of applications and databases, often with either incomplete duplication or actual errors. The result is that at any given time many individual distinct applications will have differing and inconsistent views of the same critical information.

Master Data Management

Master Data Management (MDM) is the discipline of centrally managing all of the Master Data to minimize inconsistencies and to enable an accurate enterprise-wide view of the data. MDM's first benefit is enabling much more efficient operations within an enterprise by allowing timely decision making and by eliminating errors and wastage. Its second crucial benefit is being a critical ingredient to full enterprise compliance with federal regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).

Key Solution Requirements

Many components are required for a company to create a comprehensive MDM solution:

• A certain discipline and methodology for tracking and managing all the individual Master Data items scattered across the enterprise
• A repository for modeling, storing, and centrally administering an enterprise's key master data, including all key structural information, including hierarchies, data types, value constraints, and all other related meta data
• A way of reliably collecting distributed data into the centrally stored Master Data
• A way of managing interdependencies, so that data changes in one application are reflected in both the central repository and in all other related applications
• A way of pushing changes made to master data held in the central repository out to all of the dependent applications and their local versions of the data that those applications operate upon

SQLstream MDM

SQLstream provides an elegant framework for addressing the last three of these bullets. The SQLstream MDM solution addresses these challenges by enabling SQLstream instrumentation of the data sources and sinks, as follows:

• For the MDM central repository, applying SQLstream's RDBMS Data Change Capture solution enables interpreting the repository schema, capturing all changes to the data (inserts, deletes, edits, upserts), and then generating equivalent transaction RAM streams.
• The same processes are applied to each individual application's database, again capturing all changes to the data and generating equivalent transaction RAM streams.
• These processes can also be applied to application log files where databases are not used or available for instrumentation using SQLstream's Log File and Log4J adapters.
• Ditto for application data collected from Enterprise Message Buses, where applications publish changes to data, including components of Master Data using SQLstream's JMS Adapter.

SQLstream is then used to effect continuous near real-time transformation and mediation of data from one or more sources to as many destinations as are required.

SQLstream's MDM solution allows for orchestration of the entire complex collection, aggregation, transformation, and synchronization of the master data and their components, across disparate data models. All transformation, aggregation and routing logic is expressed as declarative SQL.

SQLstream MDM benefits

With its many unique elements, the SQLstream solution provides the following benefits:

• Fully declarative model for describing not only the data sources and dependencies but also all data transformation, aggregation, and distribution requirements
• Self-optimizing process enabling maximal scalability and reliability
• Extensibility enabling synchronization of existing master data with additional future applications using different data models and format of data
• Enhanced declarative SQL, standards-compliant, able to express time-dependent, time-window and other time-sensitive aggregation, joining, and data merging operations
• Very efficient processing with high performance and throughput, auto-optimizing through SQL optimization
• High utilization factor for staff with existing SQL skill sets, in maintaining and augmenting the RAM processing using the SQL-based SQLstream language