Programming Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012

Master Data Services

It’s a bit unorthodox to begin our discussion of SQL Server BI with the Master Data Services (MDS) component, because it was only added to SQL Server in the 2008 R2 release. Often it’s easier to talk about older components first and then sketch out the nuances that make the newer components useful and necessary. Nonetheless, since we’re covering the BI stack in logical workflow order, MDS is the right place to start. MDS is Microsoft’s entry into the area of BI known as Master Data Management (MDM), which concerns itself with the maintenance of authoritative reference data like lists of customers, store locations, product categories, personnel titles, and even more generic entities like countries, states, and provinces, or ...