Business Metadata: Capturing Enterprise Knowledge

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able to view business rules, process diagrams, and other specifics. If the user

likes diagrams, you can even display a relevant portion of the ERD. Although

this takes some infrastructure and architectural planning, it generally doesn’t

require purchase of additional hardware or software, because if you are clever

you can get it done with “Bonnie’s Law,” or “Use whatever is lying around.”

(For more information on creative delivery strategies, see Chapter 8.)

In addition to definitions, it is wise to do semantic modeling and create an

enterprise conceptual model, as described earlier, and map all systems’ data

elements to this model. Unlike ...