The Business Intelligence Blog

How to insulate an organization against change - Data Modelling. Read more on its Pros and Cons.

Industry experts concur — to a degree. For one thing, says veteran data warehouse architect Mark Madsen, a principal with consultancy Third Nature and author of Clickstream Data Warehousing, what proponents such as Kalido and Sybase mean by “judicious” use of a data modeling tool takes an awful lot for granted.

“It presupposes that if you have all of your systems’ data models in a tool, then changes that are imposed will be easy,” he says, citing system changes, upgrades, and merger/acquisition activity that brings new systems into the fold as three among many common disruptions. “That’s like saying that because you have a map of outer Mongolia, a trip from one side to the other will be a simple matter of driving.”

Madsen isn’t entirely dismissive, just skeptical. “I accept that having the data models together and linked will help things like compliance efforts. For example, Visa [requires] that you control access to all databases that contain credit card numbers,” he acknowledges, “but that also presupposes that the models are somehow kept up to date, something that is generally pretty unlikely and usually a manual process.”