Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 2
Establishing
Enterprise Data
Standards
Sanjiv Purba
S
TANDARDS
EXIST
IN
SOME
FORM
OR
OTHER
IN
MOST
ORGANIZATIONS
AND
TEND
TO
BE
WIDE
REACHING
IN
ESTABLISHING
HOW
WORK
IS
PER-
.
FORMED
In the strictest sense,
standards should thoroughly describe procedures and outcomes for all the
events in an organization. The benefit of this is consistent communication
within an organization and reliable deliverables. Implementing standards is
a tricky business that can lead to an entirely different set of problems that
can also jeopardize the health of the organization. Ideally, it would be best
to simply borrow standards that have already been used successfully on
similar projects and adapt them with minimal effort. Unfortunately, this is
not possible in many real world cases, so another approach is required. As
shown in Exhibit 1, simplicity is the key to successfully implementing
enterprise data standards in most organizations.
AND
DELIVERED
WITHIN
THE
ENVIRONMENT
Enterprise data standards are part of the larger, broader “enterprise
development standards” category, which includes such topics as develop-
ment approach, walkthrough procedures, and coding conventions. This
paper focuses on establishing enterprise data standards. There are other
types of standards in organizations (e.g., development standards), but
these are outside the scope of this article. This distinction can sometimes
be subjective; for example, consider the case of form naming standards. Is
this a data standard or a development standard? For grouping purposes, I
prefer to categorize it as a naming convention under data standards. How-
ever, some would prefer to stay pure and categorize it under the more gen-
eral naming conventions in the development standards.
OBJECTIVES AND BENEFITS OF ENTERPRISE DATA STANDARDS
Data exists within organizations in a variety of formats, some of which
include: documents, databases, flat files, paper documents, binary objects,
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