PRE-CONFERENCE TUTORIALS • 29 October 2007

Effective Metadata Management
Malcolm Chisholm, AskGet.com

A wide range of metadata needs to be managed to enable enterprises to utilize their information assets. However, this is very often done in an ad-hoc basis that gradually leads to the accumulation of problems, such as repository proliferation and inadequate metadata knowledge management. Acknowledgement of the importance of metadata, and why it should be managed, is not the same thing as implementing metadata management that actually delivers. This tutorial covers the basic areas, which need to be considered to implement coherent and effective metadata management in an enterprise. Participants will take away the following:

• An understanding of different maturity levels of metadata management
• A clear strategy for repository functionality and structure.
• Management of metadata embedded in physical data outside of repositories
• Metadata governance and organizational structure
• The utilization of metadata in metadata engineering

Featured Speaker:

Malcolm Chisholm AskGet.com

The Role of Meta Data with Template-Driven ETL
Mike Schmitz, Business Knowledge Professionals Inc

Extract, transformation, and load process development (ETL) typically accounts for more than half of the work on a data warehouse project. Although complex and challenging a rigorous ETL process ensures data quality and currency thus ensuring data warehouse credibility and usefulness. The good news is that using a meta data driven approach along with proven techniques and templates can exponentially lessen the amount of effort required and can ensure data quality, scalability and performance. The robust meta data definitions also allow us to automate the development of a significant portion of the ETL process.

This tutorial will focus on the templates and the meta data definitions required to support them. A sample meta data repository will be presented and the templates will be demonstrated with working Informatica/Oracle code, but can and have been adapted for other ETL tools and database platforms.

• The template-driven approach to ETL
• The role of Meta data in the template-driven approach
• An In-depth look at the meta data required and the templates
  

Featured Speaker:

Michael Schmitz Business Knowledge Professionals

Customer Data Integration (CDI) & Master Data Management (MDM) Tutorial
Aaron Zornes, The CDI-MDM Institute

Interest in CDI and MDM has accelerated rapidly over the last two years. But despite successful projects across a broad range of industries there are still risks – especially in a relatively young and rapidly churning IT solutions market. Enterprises are rapidly embracing CDI, MDM and data governance due to: regulatory compliance issues such as privacy preference management and Basel II; the need for economic leverage of mergers & acquisitions; and, the urgency to cross sell/upsell via unified customer views.

During 2008-09, software solutions such as IBM WebSphere Customer Centre (formerly DWL Customer), Oracle-Siebel Customer Data Hub and Universal Customer Manager, and SAP NetWeaver MDM will monopolize the market share and force IT management to face difficult questions regarding which vendor will be the centre of gravity for master data hubs. For the near term, CDI-MDM skill shortages will greatly inflame project costs as demand for data stewards, enterprise data architects, and other individuals with strong affinity for data governance will outstrip the market for individuals with actual experience. Key issues and trends addressed during this tutorial include:

• What are CDI, MDM and data governance? What is driving business interest in these solutions?
• What are the better architectures and vendors? How do these solutions differ from data warehouse and customer relationship management initiatives?
• How will the market and technologies evolve? Who will be the leading vendors?
• How does an IT organization get started? How do I optimize my professional development to leverage this trend on behalf of my management?
• What are the most successful best practices for creating a “single customer view”?

Featured Speaker:

Aaron Zornes Founder & Chief Research Officer The CDI-MDM Institute

The ABC’s of Information Quality
Larry P English, INFORMATION IMPACT International

While the high—and mostly hidden—costs of poor quality information hurts both competitiveness and profits, IQ problems cannot be solved without understanding and applying sound quality management principles to information as a product of our business processes. Information quality management is not an academic exercise—it is a combination of quality principles, processes and culture transformation required for business performance excellence in the emerging, realized Information Age.

World-class organizations apply the same quality principles, such as Deming’s Fourteen Points, Kaizen, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and the Baldrige Criteria for Business Performance Excellence to information. This presentation addresses how these principles and techniques apply directly to information as a product and knowledge workers as information producers.

In this tutorial Mr. English describes the fundamental principles of information quality. He describes how an organization can improve the quality and value of its information resources. He describes metrics for measuring information quality and the management principles for implementing an effective information quality environment. Mr. English describes how organizations have successfully implemented information quality processes to improve the effectiveness of their business and information system processes.

A. Assessment: Introduction and Processes of IQ Appraisal

• Defining information quality
• Quality management principles applied to information
• Information quality characteristics: measuring the right things
• Assessing information quality: Assuring IQ assessment integrity
• Measuring the costs of poor quality information

B. Betterment: Applying the Process Improvement Cycle to Information Processes l

• Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) applied to information process quality
• Principles and techniques to design information quality into information processes

C. Culture Transformation: Creating a Sustainable Environment for Quality Information

• Deming’s14 Points of Quality applied to IQ
• Organizing for a sustainable information quality function
• Creating and sustaining change for business effectiveness through IQ management

Featured Speaker:

Larry P English INFORMATION IMPACT International

Poor IQ Can Get You Sued
Daragh O Brien, eircom

This half day tutorial builds on last year’s presentation. It will provide an overview of some real-world cases where poor IQ has lead to liabilities in Common Law and highlights recent cases where IQ principles have begun, by accident or design, to enter legal precedents. The presentation also outlines the overlap in some legal and Information concepts and outlines how a clear adoption of sound Information Quality management principles can help avoid/manage liability in Common Law

• Explores in detail the common law (non statutory) drivers for good quality information and effective control
• Discusses the legal reasons why lip service to controls and a quality of culture is fatal
• Maps legal principles to IQ practices
  

Featured Speaker:

Daragh O Brien eircom

Data Through Marketing Eyes
Kathy Hunter & Suzanne Freestone, Harte-Hanks

This half-day tutorial will provide insight into data driven marketing. The data needs for marketing are quite specialised and marketing data has challenges that need to be understood in order to achieve the best results from a company's marketing budget.

• Creating greater awareness of the importance of data to marketing departments and highlighting what is different about marketing data
• Exploring some of the issues that these challenges can create in a large enterprise-wide solution and Information Quality problems specific to marketing
• Looking at creative ways of overcoming challenges through pragmatic solutions and advice on metrics to quantify return in investment.

Attendees would include individuals working in IT, Marketing, Customer Information Management and any others who want to know more about data driven marketing.

Featured Speakers:

		Kathy Hunter Harte-Hanks
		Suzanne Freestone Harte-Hanks

Improving Business Intelligence through SOA
Rick F. van der Lans, R20/Consultancy

For years, the world of Business Intelligence has been talking about Corporate Performance Management (CPM), balance scorecards, Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), and other management instruments. Used correctly and carefully, all these instruments can be extremely valuable to an organisation. But where do we get the data? The primary source for a data warehouse is normally our set of operational systems. But these systems do not always contain the data needed for implementing the above mentioned management instruments. And here comes the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to the rescue. If SOA is extended with a Business Process Management (BPM) layer, we will get the right information for the management instruments. This tutorial will explain how the SOA/BPM couple can improve Business Intelligence. Additionally, integrating a data warehouse with SOA, will offer advantages to the latter.

• Why do classic operational systems do not have the right information for instruments such as BAM?
• Gathering the right business process data using an orchestration engine
• Using a SOA to make the data warehouse more realtime
• How to design a SOA/BPM architecture to feed BAM and CPM?
• The crucial role of data services and data governance
• Will the SOA vendors become the next generation of BI vendors?

Featured Speaker:

Rick van der Lans R20/Consultancy

A Business Process and Performance Management Framework for the Intelligent Business
Mike Ferguson, Intelligent Business Strategies

This tutorial looks at the emergence of Performance Management (PM) from a scorecards, budgeting and planning applications used by a few executives and finance departments into a framework of PM tools and PM processes that can support enterprise wide execution of business strategy. Through a performance management framework and through guided processes it becomes possible to allow everyone to contribute to managing the business and keeping it optimised. This tutorial also focuses at how performance management can be integrated with business processes to monitor and optimise operational business performance in real-time using Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) as well as providing guidance through alerting, recommendations and guided workflow processes. The tutorial will cover:

• Performance Management – Where are we today?
• Limitations of existing performance management software
• Raising the bar - Performance management requirements for the intelligent business
• The emergence of performance management processes
• Improving business performance through business processes integration
• Operational performance management - predictive analytics, scoring and performance management rules and real-time decision engines
• Integrating business process management, BAM and Activity based costing with Performance Management
• Guiding employees via personalised role based objectives, dashboards, alerts and recommendations

Featured Speaker:

Mike Ferguson Intelligent Business Strategies Ltd

Data Management in Plain English
Keith Gordon, Gordon Blain Associates Ltd.

Every organisation needs to understand and manage its information and data as a valuable corporate asset. Yet, all too often, the management of data is the Cinderella of the organisation and scant attention is paid to this key area. A well considered data management function provides the underpinning to application development and information provision. Applications can use data with confidence; users obtain the information they want in the knowledge that it is based on correct underlying data; and confidence grows. The aims, objectives and techniques of data management are often misunderstood. This tutorial is designed to unravel some of the mystery surrounding data management and is aimed at Business Managers, IT Managers, and Project Managers. This tutorial will cover:

• The importance of data to the enterprise
• How system databases are developed
• What happens without data management?
• Who should own data management
• Industry trends and their effect on data management

Featured Speaker:

Keith Gordon Gordon Blain Associates

Half Day Tutorial
14:00-17:30

Introduction to Enterprise Architecture
John A. Zachman, Zachman Internationalt

This tutorial is a brief introduction to the background, rationale and logic of the Framework for Enterprise Architecture, the “Zachman Framework”. It will explore some definitive reasons for the appearance of the Zachman Framework on the scene several years ago, likely consistent with the proposition advanced by Thomas Kuehn in “The Theory of Scientific Revolutions” that when the time is right, the invention will happen. The Framework defines the set of descriptive representations that are required to create a complex object (like an Enterprise) and serve as the basis for changing the object instance (the Enterprise) after it is created.

• Basic logic of the Framework
• Producing an identified set of descriptive representations
• Enterprise implications of not producing the Framework models
• Enterprise Architecture – The Issue of the Century

Featured Speaker:

John Zachman Zachman International

All New Data Modelling Challenges
Steve Hoberman, Steve Hoberman & Associates, LLC

Ever ski? Each trail is graded a green circle for easy, a blue square for moderate, or a black diamond for difficult. The modeling challenges you face in the office can be put into similar categories.

This tutorial contains a completely new set of easy, moderate, and difficult data modeling scenarios. You'll get hands-on experience. The more times you fall and pick yourselves up again, the more trees you hit, the more you challenge yourself, the more you'll grow your experiences and knowledge base. By the completion of the tutorial, you'll obtain a higher level of experience and have a few more techniques to apply when you get back to the office.

This tutorial includes three modules. Module 1 contains the easy Green Trails, Module 2 the moderate Blue Trails, and Module 3 the difficult Diamond Trails.

• Green trails will strengthen our skills in areas such as definition discrepancies and physically implementing subtypes.
• Blue trails will strengthen our skills in areas such as complex hierarchies and aggregation.
• Diamond trails will strengthen our skills in areas such as super star schemas and advanced normalization.

Featured Speaker:

Steve Hoberman Steve Hoberman & Associates

The Art (and Science) of Diagramming: How to Communicate Effectively Using Diagrams
Daniel Moody, University of Twente

The Role of Diagrams in Data Management Practice
Diagrams play a critical role in data management practice: they are used to document models and architectures and to communicate these to stakeholders throughout the enterprise. Despite this, data management professionals typically receive no training in how to produce “good” diagrams. In the absence of this, they are forced to rely on their intuition and experience (which is often wrong), and make layout decisions that distorts information or conveys unintended messages. The result is that most diagrams used in data management practice today do not communicate effectively. Although they are intended as a way of communicating with business users and senior management, they more often act as a barrier than an aid to communication.

What you will learn from this tutorial
This tutorial describes a set of principles for producing “good” diagrams (defined as diagrams that communicate effectively). These principles are based on scientific evidence drawn from a wide range of fields, including visual perception, cognitive psychology, graphic design, cartography, typography and diagrammatic reasoning. The principles apply to all types of diagrams, from formal diagrams used in application development and enterprise architectures to more informal diagrams used in presentations and reports.

Principles for Effective Diagrams

Topics covered include:

• What is meant by a “good” diagram: cognitive effectiveness
• The most common errors in data management diagramming practice and how to avoid them.
• The language of graphics: principles of graphic design and composition. As with any language, the better your command of it, the better you will be able to communicate.
• How diagrams are processed by the human mind: principles of visual perception and cognition. This is essential for making sensible decisions about the effectiveness of different graphical representations of the same information.
• Principles for effective diagrams: practical guidelines for producing diagrams that communicate clearly and effectively (i.e. that optimise human perception and cognition).

Featured Speaker:

Daniel Moody University of Twente

Effective Database Delivery from Requirements to Data Modelling and Beyond
Graham Witt, Ajilon Consulting

The quality of a data resource delivered to an enterprise depends on effective two-way communication between design professionals and enterprise stakeholders about the latter's requirements and the ways in which those requirements are to be met. This tutorial uses an interesting case study to illustrate the end-to-end process of turning requirements into a functional database, covering the following steps:

• Engaging the stakeholders
• Conceptual data modelling
• Requirements analysis and tracking
• Converting a conceptual data model into a logical data model
• Business Rules
• Modelling the time dimension
• Data migration

Featured Speaker:

Graham Witt Ajilon Consulting

Managing the Data Exchange Relationship
Michael Scofield, ESRI, Inc

Any time data is exchanged between distinct and dissimilar organisations, a relationship exists with a variety of duties, expectations, and technical issues. There are host of issues which must be addressed unambiguously. Of particular concern are incremental extractions of data after the first big bulk transfer. It is also important, if the incremental transfers occur over a longer period of time, to detect changes in scope, architecture, meaning, and quality of the incremental updates. It is crucial to understand the difference between updates and corrections, and to detect changes in scope, architecture, meaning, and quality of the incremental updates. We will be looking at:

• Kinds of data and information
• Logical Data Architecture of source
• Data semantics and meaning
• Ownership and usage
• Currency and completeness

Featured Speaker:

Michael Scofield ESRI, Inc

Database in Depth: Relational Theory for Practicioners
Chris Date

A technical tutorial for DBAs, data architects, DBMS implementers, database application programmers and other database professionals

Years of experience in working with the database community strongly suggest a need for a tutorial that covers relational principles in a way not tainted by the quirks and peculiarities of existing products, commercial practice, or the current version of the SQL standard. This tutorial has been designed to meet that need. It's aimed primarily at database practitioners (that is, people working in the database field, perhaps on a daily basis) who feel they don't have as much understanding of the theory underlying their own field as they might. That theory is, of course, the relational model--and while the fundamental ideas of that model are all quite simple, they're widely misrepresented in the trade press and elsewhere; indeed, they're widely misunderstood, and often not understood at all. For example, can you answer the following questions?

1. What exactly is first normal form?
2. What's the connection between relations and predicates?
3. What's semantic optimization?
4. What's a join dependency?
5. Why is semi difference important?
6. Why doesn't deferred integrity checking make sense?
7. What's a relation variable?
8. What's nonloss decomposition?
9. Can a relation have an attribute whose values are relations?
10. What's the difference between SQL and the relational model?
11. Why is The Information Principle important?
12. How does XML fit with the relational model?

This tutorial provides the answers to these and many related questions. Overall, the intent is to help true database professionals understand relational theory in depth and make use of that understanding in their day-to-day database activities.

TOPIC OUTLINE

1. Preliminaries

• SQL =/ the relational model!
• Terminology: principles not products
• The original model: overview
• Model vs. implementation
• Properties of relations
• Relations vs. relvars
• Values vs. variables

2. Relations vs. types

• Domains are types ...
• ... of arbitrary complexity
• Types have operators
• System- vs. user-defined types
• Scalar vs. nonscalar types
• Generated types

3. Tuples and relations

• What's a tuple?
• Important consequences
• What's a relation?
• Further consequences
• Why duplicates are prohibited
• Why nulls are prohibited
• TABLE_DUM and TABLE_DEE

4. Relation variables

• Updating is set-at-a-time
• Candidate and foreign keys
• Views and view processing
• The Principle of Interchangeability
• Predicates and propositions
• More on relations vs. types

5. Relational algebra

• Importance of closure
• Familiar operators (JOIN etc.)
• Which operators are primitive?
• Evaluating SQL expressions
• RENAME, EXTEND, SUMMARIZE
• SEMIJOIN, SEMIMINUS
• GROUP, UNGROUP
• Optimization
• Relational comparisons
• Assignment revisited
• What about ORDER BY?

6. Integrity constraints

• Type and database constraints
• The role of transactions
• When are constraints checked?
• Multiple assignment
• Constraints and predicates
• The Golden Rule
• Correctness vs. consistency

7. Database design

• The place of design theory
• BCNF and 5NF; join dependencies
• A useful normalization theorem
• Why normalization is not a panacea
• But don't denormalize!
• The Principle of Orthogonal Design
• Orthogonality and normalization
• Remarks on physical design

8. What is the relational model?

• Five components and their significance
• The Information Principle
• Relational systems and others
• Where next?
• Suggestions for further reading

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

• DBMS designers, implementers, and other vendor personnel
• Database consultants
• Data and database administrators
• Information modelers and database designers
• Database application designers and implementers
• Computer science professors specializing in database matters
• People responsible for DBMS product evaluation and acquisition

The tutorial is not meant for beginners: Attendees will be expected to have at least an elementary familiarity with database concepts in general and the SQL language in particular.

OBJECTIVES

On completion of this tutorial, attendees will:

• Have a solid appreciation of the importance of sound principles and foundations
• Understand why and how the relational model is still directly relevant to modern database technology and will remain so for as far as anyone can see
• See why and how the SQL standard is seriously deficient
• Be able to use the best current theoretical knowledge in the design of their databases and database applications
• Be able to make informed decisions in their daily database professional activities

Featured Speaker:

Chris Date