--- In [email protected], "htshozawa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Kirstan, before this thread ends, would appreciate if you can tell me > your thoughts on MDM. Is MDM part of SOA?
I would say that you cannot have a successful SOA without MDM, since the vocabulary of the business should be managed as part of MDM (the master data dictionary). The vocabulary is a critical point of alignment of business with IT. It seems MDM is part of SOA. But companies have been trying to implement MDM (or at least major pieces of MDM) for a long time (probably with similar level of success that Anne Manes finds with SOA), and the MDM initiative is often independent of SOA. MDM has benefits even if a company is not service oriented. So now it seems MDM is NOT a part of SOA. In the end, all you can say is that MDM is a required activity if you are service oriented. > Is SOA more of data modeling in the business logic layer rather than > the physical data layer? We use something like MDM to have consistent > data across physical data while we use something like > registry/repository to have consistent data model in the business logic > layer (i.e. interfaces). This is an interesting thought, that SOA is like "data" modeling at the business logic layer. However, I do think MDM is most useful driving the process from top to bottom, from business through IT. An enterprise has models of all shapes and flavors for various aspects of the enterprise - architecture diagrams, data models, network diagrams, org charts, business goals, etc. The modeled entities have real-world relationships, which would ideally be captured, managed, and reported on somewhere. A metadata repository (MDR) is where these models and relationships would be managed. One MDR vendor I've had exposure to that is doing this is Adaptive in the UK, whose CTO Pete Rivett has chaired or co-chaired a number of OMG modeling initiatives and has contributed to the MOF and XMI standards. The real benefits are then the "metadata applications" built on top of the MDR: for example impact analysis could reveal, when IT wants to merge 2 databases, what systems, networks, services, applications, and support groups might be affected. There are many potential benefits across design time and run time/operational support. >From a more pragmatic standpoint, in terms of MDM and SOA, the master data dictionary establishes a vocabulary used in the entity definitions, which become the subjects of the service operations. The DAL that I've discussed is composed of entity-style services, where the entities are defined using XML Schema, and the vocabulary used in the schema is taken from the master data dictionary. -Kirstan
