Chapter 17
Turning Data into Services
In This Chapter
Getting clean and consistent data
Ridding yourself of data silos
Making sure you can trust your data
Making information into a service
If you decided to dive in to the world of service oriented architecture — thereby reaping the benefits of sharing critical business services across the organization — you need to consider how to maximize the trust and confidence you have in your company’s information. You may decide to begin your SOA journey by eliminating some of the redundancies in businesses technology systems and software, but you can’t stop there. The next step is to ensure that all the organization’s data is both consistent and accurate. This chapter shows you how to achieve both those goals.
When Good Data Goes Bad: Getting Clean and Consistent Data
Service oriented architecture represents a new way of thinking about everything in a company’s IT structure, including how one thinks about data. It begins with the goal of achieving consistency between data sources. To achieve data consistency, you begin by separating your data from its tight dependency on the business applications that created it.
Data is one of an organization’s most precious assets, but critical data stores are typically segregated by business function in data silos. Data silos are instances of information stored in the context of a particular use within a business unit. Data silos, therefore, have business rules that are specific to the needs of one ...
