Data Management Dozen (Plus)

To build a good foundation in data management, consult these experts

Intelligent Enterprise's annual dozen issue recognizes vendors and products that are exemplary in their support of specific data management processes. But where did the product developers get their requirements?

Many turned to the books that were available when they were designing the initial version of the product. Given the influence that the authors of data management books have had on the features of many of our tools, I think it is appropriate to also honor the people who have led the direction of our industry through their willingness to share their expertise. What follows is a list of the books and people who have had the greatest influence on my data management career.

Data Administration

William R. Durell is the elder statesman of data administration. His classic book, Data Administration: A Practical Guide to Successful Data Management (McGraw-Hill, 1985), has served as the primer for many new to data administration. The book's dedication strikes at the essence of the data management problem: "This book is dedicated to data administration - an island of discipline in an ocean of disorder." His companion books include The ABC's of Information Resource Management (Data Administration Inc., 1986) and Confessions of a Data Administrator (Data Administration Inc., 1990). Unfortunately, all three books are out of print.

The Data Administration Management Association (DAMA) International publishes an excellent book, Guidelines for Implementing Data Resource Management, Third Edition (1999). The Chicago DAMA chapter compiled this collection of short articles on various data administration topics, including business rules, naming standards, and data quality. Many of the other authors I highlight in this column contributed to this useful gem. You can order the book through the DAMA International Web site at www.DAMA.org.

Metadata Management

Michael H. Brackett has written a number of books that address metadata management and the issues surrounding data sharing. The one I like best is Data Sharing, Using a Common Data Architecture (John Wiley & Sons, 1994) because it is where I first encountered the concept of disparate data. A major barrier to data integration, disparate data results from designs made to satisfy a specific application's processing requirements rather than with an eye to data value sharing across applications. The term disparate data is perfect because it encapsulates the whole notion of the "ocean of disorder" that data administrators contend with daily.

Dan Tasker's Fourth-Generation Data: A Guide to Data Analysis for New and Old Systems (Prentice Hall, 1989) can be classified under several categories. But I selected metadata management because the author builds a metamodel of the information needed to manage data as he addresses numerous data analysis issues. For example, he disserts on the process of selecting database keys by exploring the trade-off between surrogate keys and identifiers that are more meaningful to the business community from the perspective of each stakeholder. Unfortunately, this is another out-of-print data management book.

Data Modeling

When I first started my career in data management, there were very few books available on data modeling. The books that did exist were more focused on how to draw proper diagrams. Few books provided the insights I was seeking about how to select the appropriate model for a given set of business rules. I found much of that insight in Tom Bruce's Designing Quality Databases with IDEF1X Information Models (Dorset House, 1992). This book goes beyond the "how to" approach by providing meaningful examples to represent each theoretical premise. When appropriate, Bruce explores the shortcomings of the theory encountered when the concept is applied to real-world business modeling.

Graeme Simsion continues this theme of the practical application of data modeling theory in Data Modeling Essentials: Analysis, Design, and Innovation (The Coriolis Group, 1993). Throughout the book, he emphasizes the effect data design has on an enterprise's applications, as these quotes illustrate: "A well-designed data model can make programming simpler and cheaper," "Poor data organization is often expensive to fix," and "The data model is a relatively small part of the total systems specification but has a high impact on the quality and useful life of the system. Time spent producing the best possible design is very likely to be repaid in the future." These insights are the type that can help sell data modeling to even the most skeptical of application development managers.

I'm including Ralph Kimball's The Data Warehouse Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building Dimensional Data Warehouses (John Wiley & Sons, 1996) under data modeling because it illustrates that there are many ways data needs to be organized to be useful within an enterprise. Optimizing data structures according to the dictates of the relational model is not sufficient to support all uses of data. His book's primary benefit is that it is filled with a most impressive collection of case studies that illustrate how data should be structured to meet the analysis requirements of knowledge workers.

Resource Life Cycle Analysis: A Business Modeling Technique for IS Planning by Ron Ross and Wanda Michaels (Business Rules Solutions Inc., 1992) is an important advancement in providing a business-oriented analysis and modeling approach at the planning level that can be transformed into information system models. This obscure book hasn't received the attention it deserves as a viable methodology for understanding information from an enterprise perspective. I find its melding of resources with their value-chain business functions to be comparable to encapsulation of knowledge and action properties into objects at the business analysis phase.

Information Architecture

Few people have influenced an industry the way John Zachman has influenced the information resource management community with his Information Systems Architecture framework. The framework provides a simple matrix that describes the complexities associated with producing large, integrated systems - whether an airplane, building, or information system. His Data Warehousing and the Zachman Framework: Managing Enterprise Knowledge (McGraw-Hill, 1997) - cowritten with William H. Inmon and Jonathan G. Geiger - is the first book to provide an in-depth treatment of the Zachman Framework.

Strategic Data Planning Methodologies (Prentice-Hall, 1982) by James Martin is the first book I read when I was transferred into data management. After I had spent years as an application programmer and designer, the world of data management was completely foreign to me. I couldn't have selected a better book for laying out the issues I would be confronting as a manager of enterprise information. As with so many of our other data management books, this book is also out of print. But most of it has been incorporated into Martin's Information Engineering trilogy (Prentice-Hall, 1983).

If Bill Durell is the elder statesman of data administration, Larry English holds that position for data quality. For years, Larry has shared his approaches for achieving data quality within enterprises by making presentations at conferences and writing countless magazine articles. Finally, he has made much of that body of knowledge available through his recently published book, Improving Data Warehouse and Business Information Quality: Methods for Reducing Costs and Increasing Profits (John Wiley & Sons, 1999).

Business Rules

Ronald Ross's book on data administration, Data Dictionaries and Data Administration, Concepts and Practices for Data Resource Management (AMACOM, 1981), actually predates Durell's. But today, Ross is best known for his extensive work in the area of business rules. Few would deny his right to the title "Father of the Business Rule Approach." Ross can also claim to have written both the largest and smallest books addressing business rules: The Business Rule Book, Classifying, Defining, and Modeling Rules (Database Research Group Inc., 1997) and Business Rule Concepts: The New Mechanics of Business Information Systems (Business Rule Solutions, 1999). If you are looking to introduce your manager and colleagues to business rules, the latter book can't be beat.

If Ross is the father of the business rule approach, than Barbara von Halle can easily lay claim to being its mother. Her early articles in Database Programming & Design lay much of the foundation for the understanding of what business rules are and how they should be managed.

Knowledge Worker Management

Finally, I wish the person who dreamed up cubicles had read Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister's Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Dorset House, 1987). They would have left their idea for the replacement of quiet offices on the drawing board. From the initial pages that proclaim knowledge workers are not interchangeable like the hamburger flippers in a fast food restaurant, the authors describe the environment needed for knowledge workers to be the most productive. Unfortunately, the office space designs of most American companies violate these environmental requirements. This book is another must-read for anyone who wants to achieve peak performance from analysts and designers.

Terry Moriarty (terry@inastrol.com), president of Inastrol, a San Francisco-based information management consultancy, specializes in customer relationship information and metadata management.