Data Quality: An Architectural Solution - High-Performance Web Databases: Design, Development, and Deployment - page 432

FDS OVERVIEW AND BENEFITS

Organizations have foundation data whether or not they design and im-
plement it as a separate data store. Some organizations implement refer-
ence files/databases (also known in some companies as pillar databases,
subject databases, and master databases) for foundation data. The founda-
tion data store is a mechanism to formalize this practice into an architec-
tural construct like the operational data store and data warehouse. The
term is used in this chapter because it appropriately

reflects the architectural placement and importance of this data store.

foundation data store

The FDS contains relatively nonvolatile information that is traditionally
found in a master file (e.g., customer data, vendor data, organization struc-
tures, and product data). This information can be viewed as a centrally
maintained or authenticated data store that operational systems would
use instead of creating and maintaining their own unique versions of the
foundation data.

The information content of the FDS is based on standards for common
data definitions, structures, and values. The commonality depends on how
diverse an organization is; for example, the more diverse the organization,
the less the commonality of data. An example of a high-level, entity-rela-
tionship (ER) diagram for a foundation data store is shown in Exhibit 1.

Exhibit 29-1. Sample ER diagram for foundation data store.