I recommend Jeff Jonas's blog for his acute insights into data management and analytics. Jonas would have a fair claim to have invented a lot of this stuff, and he's always worth listening to – especially when he challenges the easy cliches that we take for granted every day.
Back in 2006 he made the important point that “there is no such thing as a single version of the truth”, arguing that enterprises need to keep pluralism in their data holdings. One example he uses is that it's better to send a hotel guest's statement to the address she gives when checking out than to pick a “better” address based on some other source and the currency she paid in.
Jonas continued this theme when discussing the value of keeping plural data views when combining data from different sources. He set out a cogent argument for why “merge and purge” approaches destroy value. There is still a need to associate different data sets that represent facts about the same real world entities, but we don't need to suppress the variant attributes and relationships that connect with these identities.
As business becomes more analytics-driven, decision makers are recognizing that all data is potentially valuable. But the key word is potentially. Unless you can tie your data together meaningfully, all you have is a big mess. For technologists – who know this well – the added message is that data can be made meaningful without being whittled down to the bare bones. Jeff Jonas
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