Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
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Data as a shared corporate resource
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Efficiency in job specialization
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Operational management of data
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Managing externally acquired databases
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Managing data in the decentralized environment
F IGURE 10.1
The advantages of data and database
administration
through them. Today's organizations could not function without their vast stores
of personnel data, customer data, product data, supplier data, and so forth. Indeed,
data may well be the most important corporate resource because, by its very nature,
it describes all of the others. Furthermore, the effective use of its data can give a
company a significant competitive advantage. Whether it is used for supply chain
management, customer service, or advanced marketing applications, a company's
data can have a real impact on its share of the marketplace and on its bottom-line
profitability.
But all resources tend to be scarce (is there ever enough money to go around?)
and there is typically internal competition for them. Data is no exception. As more
and more corporate functions seek the same data for their work, bottlenecks can
form and the speed of accessing the data can slow. Companies have responded to
this in a variety of ways, including bringing in faster computers and making copies
of the data for different applications. But the former strategy has its limits and
the latter introduces the kind of multi-file redundancy that we have argued against
throughout this topic. Also, some companies have a policy of data ''ownership''
in which one of several corporate functions that share some particular data has the
primary claim to it and often the ability to decide who else can use it.
What all of this is leading to is simply this: Any shared corporate resource
requires a dedicated department to manage it. How would a company handle its
money without its finance and accounting departments? It makes little sense to
have an important resource either not managed at all or managed part-time and
half-heartedly by some group that has other responsibilities too. It also makes little
sense to have any one of the groups competing for the shared resource also manage
it—the resource manager must obviously be impartial when a dispute arises. The
dedicated departments that manage the company's data are the data administration
and database administration departments. And, actually, the parallel between the
two corporate resources, money and data, is reflected in the parallel of having two
company functions to manage each. Finance and data administration, respectively,
take a more strategic or tactical-level view of each resource. Accounting and
database administration, respectively, take a more operational-level view of them.
Efficiency in Job Specialization
Many of the functions involved in the management of data are highly specialized
and require specific expertise. They can range from long-range data planning to
working with the idiosyncrasies of a particular database management system. This
argues for a full-time staff of specialists who do nothing but manage a company's
data and databases.
A good example, and one on which we have spent considerable time already, is
database design. To do a really good job of both logical and physical database design
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