Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
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Figure 13.13 The Auditor's Mirror Image of the Nine-Fold Way.
The Value of Internalizing Pipeline Datasets
The cost of managing physical pipeline datasets is high. This
cost is seldom discussed because it is universally thought to be
just an inevitable cost of doing business. Bringing down this cost
is a matter of doing all those various things that IT management
has done for decades, and continues to do. Quality control pro-
cedures are put in place so errors don't creep into our databases
and later have to be backed out. The platform costs of storing,
transforming, and moving data into and out of pipeline data-
sets are controlled by minimizing redundancy, and by moving
datasets up and down the storage hierarchy. Software that sets
up and runs production schedules minimizes the human costs
of scheduling work involving these pipeline datasets.
But the work of managing pipeline datasets is tedious. And
whenever the management of these datasets is a one-off kind
of thing, i.e. whenever the development group has to manage
these datasets rather than the IT Operations group that handles
scheduled maintenance, errors in managing them are not
uncommon.
Asserted Versioning does not offer a way to more efficiently
manage pipeline datasets. It offers a way to eliminate them
and, consequently, eliminate the totality of their management
costs! There will always be some circumstances in which data
must be manipulated in external pipeline datasets. But these
can become the exception rather than the rule.
In place of these pipeline datasets, Asserted Versioning
stores the information contained in those pipeline datasets
internally, within the production tables that are their sources
and destinations. Pending transactions can be stored within
the production tables themselves. Posted transactions can be,
too. Data staging areas can also exist as semantically distinct sets
of rows, physically contained within production tables. Pipeline
datasets, then, cease to exist as distinct physical objects. They
become virtualized, as semantically distinct collections of rows
