ORM and MDM/MMS: Integration in an Enterprise Level Conceptual Data Model

Abstract

The integration of a number of facets of reference data, metadata, data models, governance, and services continues to grow and become more important and pragmatic to businesses. Since 2004 a growing number of companies have heavily invested many resources into pulling together related components into more and more unified approaches that attempt to help solve the problem of managing data. More specifically, Master Data Management and closely related components to MDM such as metadata management systems (MMS) and business glossaries are critical to delivering a complete organically grown product with a single, clean architecture. This paper will describe a scenario of how Object Role Modeling could be leveraged to provide the enterprise with a fact based conceptual model that is integrated with an MDM’s business glossary. The ultimate goal is to provide a common understanding of the business at a conceptual level and at the same time deliver on the capability of providing a comprehensive and deep ‘where used’ capability for the delivery of a variety of common functions desperately need by companies today. This scenario is based on the evaluation of three major MDM vendors during the past year by Boston Scientific Corporation.