🗃️Data Management: Data Management (Just the Quotes)

"Metadata provides context for data by describing data about data. It answers 'who, what, when, where, how, and why' about every facet of the data. It is used to facilitate understanding, usage, and management of data." (Neera Bhansali, "Data Governance: Creating Value from Information Assets", 2014)

"How good the data quality is can be looked at both subjectively and objectively. The subjective component is based on the experience and needs of the stakeholders and can differ by who is being asked to judge it. For example, the data managers may see the data quality as excellent, but consumers may disagree. One way to assess it is to construct a survey for stakeholders and ask them about their perception of the data via a questionnaire. The other component of data quality is objective. Measuring the percentage of missing data elements, the degree of consistency between records, how quickly data can be retrieved on request, and the percentage of incorrect matches on identifiers (same identifier, different social security number, gender, date of birth) are some examples." (Aileen Rothbard, "Quality Issues in the Use of Administrative Data Records", 2015)

"Start by reviewing existing data management activities, such as who creates and manages data, who measures data quality, or even who has ‘data’ in their job title. Survey the organization to find out who may already be fulfilling needed roles and responsibilities. Such individuals may hold different titles. They are likely part of a distributed organization and not necessarily recognized by the enterprise. After compiling a list of ‘data people,’ identify gaps. What additional roles and skill sets are required to execute the data strategy? In many cases, people in other parts of the organization have analogous, transferrable skill sets. Remember, people already in the organization bring valuable knowledge and experience to a data management effort." (DAMA International, "DAMA-DMBOK: Data Management Body of Knowledge", 2017)

"A big part of data governance should be about helping people (business and technical) get their jobs done by providing them with resources to answer their questions, such as publishing the names of data stewards and authoritative sources and other metadata, and giving people a way to raise, and if necessary escalate, data issues that are hindering their ability to do their jobs. Data governance helps answer some basic data management questions." (Mike Fleckenstein & Lorraine Fellows, "Modern Data Strategy", 2018)

"A data lake is a storage repository that holds a very large amount of data, often from diverse sources, in native format until needed. In some respects, a data lake can be compared to a staging area of a data warehouse, but there are key differences. Just like a staging area, a data lake is a conglomeration point for raw data from diverse sources. However, a staging area only stores new data needed for addition to the data warehouse and is a transient data store. In contrast, a data lake typically stores all possible data that might be needed for an undefined amount of analysis and reporting, allowing analysts to explore new data relationships. In addition, a data lake is usually built on commodity hardware and software such as Hadoop, whereas traditional staging areas typically reside in structured databases that require specialized servers." (Mike Fleckenstein & Lorraine Fellows, "Modern Data Strategy", 2018)

"Data governance presents a clear shift in approach, signals a dedicated focus on data management, distinctly identifies accountability for data, and improves communication through a known escalation path for data questions and issues. In fact, data governance is central to data management in that it touches on essentially every other data management function. In so doing, organizational change will be brought to a group is newly - and seriously - engaging in any aspect of data management." (Mike Fleckenstein & Lorraine Fellows, "Modern Data Strategy", 2018)

"Indicators represent a way of 'distilling' the larger volume of data collected by organizations. As data become bigger and bigger, due to the greater span of control or growing complexity of operations, data management becomes increasingly difficult. Actions and decisions are greatly influenced by the nature, use and time horizon (e.g., short or long-term) of indicators." (Fiorenzo Franceschini et al, "Designing Performance Measurement Systems: Theory and Practice of Key Performance Indicators", 2019)

"The transformation of a monolithic application into a distributed application creates many challenges for data management." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Best Practices for Enterprise Architecture", 2020)

"Data management of the future must build in embracing change, by default. Rigid data modeling and querying languages that expect to put the system in a straitjacket of a never-changing schema can only result in a fragile and unusable analytics system. [...] The data management of the future must support managing and accessing data across multiple hosting platforms, by default." (Zhamak Dehghani, "Data Mesh: Delivering Data-Driven Value at Scale", 2021)

"I am using ‘data strategy’ as an overarching term to describe a far broader set of capabilities from which sub-strategies can be developed to focus on particular facets of the strategy, such as management information (MI) and reporting; analytics, machine learning and AI; insight; and, of course, data management." (Ian Wallis, "Data Strategy: From definition to execution", 2021)

"In short, a monolithic architecture, technology, and organizational structure are not suitable for analytical data management of large-scale and complex organizations." (Zhamak Dehghani, "Data Mesh: Delivering Data-Driven Value at Scale", 2021)

"In the same vein, data strategy is often a misnomer for a much wider scope of coverage, but the lack of coherence in how we use the language has led to data strategy being perceived to cover data management activities all the way through to exploitation of data in the broadest sense. The occasional use of information strategy, intelligence strategy or even data exploitation strategy may differentiate, but the lack of a common definition on what we mean tends to lead to data strategy being used as a catch-all for the more widespread coverage such a document would typically include. Much of this is due to the generic use of the term ‘data’ to cover everything from its capture, management, governance through to reporting, analytics and insight." (Ian Wallis, "Data Strategy: From definition to execution", 2021)

"One of the limitations of data management solutions today is how we have attempted to manage its unwieldy complexity, how we have decomposed an ever-growing monolithic data platform and team to smaller partitions. We have chosen the path of least resistance, a technical partitioning." (Zhamak Dehghani, "Data Mesh: Delivering Data-Driven Value at Scale", 2021)

⛏️Data Management: Data Governance (Definitions)

"The infrastructure, resources, and processes involved in managing data as a corporate asset." (Jill Dyché & Evan Levy, "Customer Data Integration", 2006)

"A process focused on managing the quality, consistency, usability, security, and availability of information." (Alex Berson & Lawrence Dubov, "Master Data Management and Customer Data Integration for a Global Enterprise", 2007)

"The practice of organizing and implementing policies, procedures, and standards for the effective use of an organization's structured or unstructured information assets." (Laura Reeves, "A Manager's Guide to Data Warehousing", 2009)

"The process for addressing how data enters the organization, who is accountable for it, and how - using people, processes, and technologies - data achieves a quality standard that allows for complete transparency within an organization." (Tony Fisher, "The Data Asset", 2009)

"A framework of processes aimed at defining and managing the quality, consistency, usability, security, and availability of information with the primary focus on cross-functional, cross-departmental, and/or cross-divisional concerns of information management." (Alex Berson & Lawrence Dubov, "Master Data Management and Data Governance", 2010)

"The policies and processes that continually work to improve and ensure the availability, accessibility, quality, consistency, auditability, and security of data in a company or institution." (David Lyle & John G Schmidt, "Lean Integration", 2010)

"The exercise of authority, control, and shared decision-making (planning, monitoring, and enforcement) over the management of data assets." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"Data governance is the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archival and deletion of data and information. It includes the processes, roles, standards and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of data and information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals." (Oracle, "Enterprise Information Management: Best Practices in Data Governance", 2011)

"Processes and controls at the data level; a newer, hybrid quality control discipline that includes elements of data quality, data management, information governance policy development, business process improvement, and compliance and risk management."(Robert F Smallwood, "Information Governance: Concepts, Strategies, and Best Practices", 2014)

"The process for addressing how data enters the organization, who is accountable for it, and how that data achieves the organization's quality standards that allow for complete transparency within an organization." (Jim Davis & Aiman Zeid, "Business Transformation", 2014) 

"A company-wide framework that determines which decisions must be made and who should make them. This includes the definition of roles, responsibilities, obligations and rights in handling the company’s resource data. In this, data governance pursues the goal of maximizing the value of the data in the company. While data governance determines how decisions should be made, data management makes the actual decisions and implements them." (Boris Otto & Hubert Österle, "Corporate Data Quality", 2015)

"The discipline of applying controls to data in order to ensure its integrity over time." (Gregory Lampshire, "The Data and Analytics Playbook", 2016)

"Data governance refers to the overall management of the availability, usability, integrity and security of the data employed in an enterprise. Sound data governance programs include a governing body or council, a defined set of procedures and a standard operating procedure." (Dennis C Guster, "Scalable Data Warehouse Architecture: A Higher Education Case Study", 2018)

"It is a combination of people, processes and technology that drives high-quality, high-value information. The technology portion of data governance combines data quality, data integration and master data management to ensure that data, processes, and people can be trusted and accountable, and that accurate information flows through the enterprise driving business efficiency." (Richard T Herschel, "Business Intelligence", 2019)

"The processes and technical infrastructure that an organization has in place to ensure data privacy, security, availability, usability, and integrity." (Lili Aunimo et al, "Big Data Governance in Agile and Data-Driven Software Development: A Market Entry Case in the Educational Game Industry", 2019)

"The management of data throughout its entire lifecycle in the company to ensure high data quality. Data Governance uses guidelines to determine which standards are applied in the company and which areas of responsibility should handle the tasks required to achieve high data quality." (Mohammad K Daradkeh, "Enterprise Data Lake Management in Business Intelligence and Analytics: Challenges and Research Gaps in Analytics Practices and Integration", 2021)

"A set of processes that ensures that data assets are formally managed throughout the enterprise. A data governance model establishes authority and management and decision making parameters related to the data produced or managed by the enterprise." (NSA/CSS)

"The management of the availability, usability, integrity and security of the data stored within an enterprise." (Solutions Review)

"The process of defining the rules that data has to follow within an organization." (Talend)

Data governance 2.0: "An agile approach to data governance focused on just enough controls for managing risk, which enables broader and more insightful use of data required by the evolving needs of an expanding business ecosystem." (Forrester)

"Data governance encompasses the strategies and technologies used to ensure data is in compliance with regulations and organization policies with respect to data usage." (Adobe)

"Data governance encompasses the strategies and technologies used to make sure business data stays in compliance with regulations and corporate policies." (Informatica) [source]

"Data Governance includes the people, processes and technologies needed to manage and protect the company’s data assets in order to guarantee generally understandable, correct, complete, trustworthy, secure and discoverable corporate data." (BI Survey) [source]

"Data governance is a control that ensures that data entry by a business user or an automated process meets business standards. It manages a variety of things including availability, usability, accuracy, integrity, consistency, completeness, and security of data usage. Through data governance, organizations are able to exercise positive control over the processes and methods to handle data." (Logi Analytics) [source]

"Data governance is a structure put in place allowing organisations to proactively manage data quality." (experian) [source]

"Data governance is an organization's internal policy framework that determines the way people make data management decisions. All aspects of data management must be carried out in accordance with the organization's governance policies." (Xplenty) [source]

"Data Governance is the exercise of decision-making and authority for data-related matters." (The Data Governance Institute)

"Data Governance is a system of decision rights and accountabilities for information-related processes, executed according to agreed-upon models which describe who can take what actions with what information, and when, under what circumstances, using what methods." (The Data Governance Institute)

"Data governance is the practice of organizing and implementing policies, procedures and standards for the effective use of an organization's structured/unstructured information assets." (Information Management)

"Data governance is the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to ensure the appropriate behavior in the valuation, creation, consumption and control of data and analytics." (Gartner)

"The exercise of authority, control and shared decision making (planning, monitoring and enforcement) over the management of data assets. It refers to the overall management of the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data employed in an enterprise. A sound data governance program includes a governing body or council, a defined set of procedures, and a plan to execute those procedures." (CODATA)

⛏️Data Management: Data Management [DM] (Definitions)

"The day-to-day tasks necessary to tactically manage data, including overseeing its quality, lineage, usage, and deployment across systems, organizations, and user communities." (Jill Dyché & Evan Levy, "Customer Data Integration", 2006)

"A corporate service which helps with the provision of information services by controlling or coordinating the definitions and usage of reliable and relevant data." (Keith Gordon, "Principles of Data Management", 2007)

"The policies, procedures, and technologies that dictate the granular management of data in an organization. This includes supervising the quality of data and ensuring it is used and deployed properly." (Tony Fisher, "The Data Asset", 2009)

"Structured approach for capturing, storing, processing, integrating, distributing, securing, and archiving data effectively throughout their life cycle." (Linda Volonino & Efraim Turban, "Information Technology for Management 8th Ed", 2011)

"The business function that develops and executes plans, policies, practices, and projects that acquire, control, protect, deliver, and enhance the value of data." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"The process of managing data as a resource that is valuable to an organization or business, including the process of developing data architectures, developing practices and procedures for dealing with data, and then executing these aspects on a regular basis." (Jim Davis & Aiman Zeid, "Business Transformation", 2014)

"Processes by which data across multiple platforms is integrated, cleansed, migrated, and managed." (Hamid R Arabnia et al, "Application of Big Data for National Security", 2015)

"The full lifecycle care of organizational data assets, through the implementation of accepted good practice, to develop and maintain their value." (Kevin J Sweeney, "Re-Imagining Data Governance", 2018)

"Controlling, protecting, and facilitating access to data in order to provide information consumers with timely access to the data they need. The functions provided by a database management system." (Information Management)

"The development and execution of architectures, policies and practices to manage the data life-cycle needs of an enterprise." (Solutions Review)

"The policies, procedures, and technical choices used to handle data through its entire lifecycle from data collection to storage, preservation and use. A data management policy should take account of the needs of data quality, availability, data protection, data preservation, etc." (Open Data Handbook) 

"The processes, procedures, policies, technologies, and architecture that manage data from definition to destruction, which includes transformation, governance, quality, security, and availability throughout its life cycle." (Forrester)

"The process by which data is acquired, validated, stored, protected, and processed. In turn, its accessibility, reliability, and timeliness is ensured to satisfy the needs of the data users. Data management properly oversees the full data lifecycle needs of an enterprise." (Insight Software)

"Data management comprises all the disciplines related to ingesting, organizing, and maintaining data as a valuable resource." (OmiSci) [source]

"Data management (DM) consists of the practices, architectural techniques, and tools for achieving consistent access to and delivery of data across the spectrum of data subject areas and data structure types in the enterprise, to meet the data consumption requirements of all applications and business processes." (Gartner)

"Data management consists of practices and tools used to ingest, store, organize, and maintain the data created and gathered by an organization in order to deliver reliable and timely data to users." (Qlik) [source]

"Data management is a strategy used by organizations to make data secure, efficient, and available for any relevant business purposes." (Xplenty) [source]

"Data management is the implementation of policies and procedures that put organizations in control of their business data regardless of where it resides. […] Data management is concerned with the end-to-end lifecycle of data, from creation to retirement, and the controlled progression of data to and from each stage within its lifecycle." (Informatica) [source]

"The function of controlling the acquisition, analysis, storage, retrieval, and distribution of data." (IEEE 610.5-1990)

⛏️Data Management: Master Data Management [MDM] (Definitions)

"The set of disciplines and methods to ensure the currency, meaning, and quality of a company’s reference data that is shared across various systems and organizations." (Jill Dyché & Evan Levy, "Customer Data Integration", 2006)

"The framework of processes and technologies aimed at creating and maintaining an authoritative, reliable, sustainable, accurate, and secure data environment that represents a “single version of truth,” an accepted system of record used both intra- and interenterprise across a diverse set of application systems, lines of business, and user communities. (Alex Berson & Lawrence Dubov, "Master Data Management and Customer Data Integration for a Global Enterprise", 2007)

"Centralized facilities designed to hold master copies of shared entities, such as customers or products. MDM systems are meant to support transaction systems and usually have some means to reconcile different sources for the same attribute." (Ralph Kimball, "The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit", 2008)

"Processes that control management of master data values to enable consistent, shared, contextual use across systems, of the most accurate, timely, and relevant version of truth about essential business entities." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge" 1st Ed., 2009)

"The guiding principles and technology for maintaining data in a manner that can be shared across various systems and departments throughout an organization." (Tony Fisher, "The Data Asset", 2009)

"The processes and tools to help an organization consistently define and manage core reference or descriptive data across the organization. This may involve providing a centralized view of the data to ensure that its use for all business processes is consistent and accurate." (Laura Reeves, "A Manager's Guide to Data Warehousing", 2009)

"Master Data Management comprises a set of processes and tools that consistently define and manage the nontransactional data entities of an organization such as Customers and Products." (Paulraj Ponniah, "Data Warehousing Fundamentals for IT Professionals", 2010)

"A discipline that resolves master data to maintain the golden record, the holistic and panoramic view of master entities and relationships, and the benchmark for master data that can be used across the enterprise, and sometimes between enterprises to facilitate data exchanges." (Alex Berson & Lawrence Dubov, "Master Data Management and Data Governance", 2010)

"A system and services for the single, authoritative source of truth of master data for an enterprise." (Martin Oberhofer et al, "The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture", 2010)

"MDM is a set of disciplines, processes, and technologies for ensuring the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, and consistency of multiple domains of enterprise data across applications, systems, and databases, and across multiple business processes, functional areas, organizations, geographies, and channels." (Dan Power, "Moving Master Data Management into the Cloud", 2010)

"The processes and tools to help an organization consistently define and manage core reference or descriptive data " (Martin Oberhofer et al, "The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture", 2010)

"The set of codes and structures that identify and organize data, such as customer numbers, employee IDs, and general ledger account numbers." (Janice M Roehl-Anderson, "IT Best Practices for Financial Managers", 2010)

"An information quality activity in which the data elements that are used by multiple systems in an organization are identified, managed, and controlled at the enterprise level." (John R Talburt, "Entity Resolution and Information Quality", 2011)

"Data that is key to the operation of a business, such as data about customers, suppliers, partners, products, and materials." (Brenda L Dietrich et al, "Analytics Across the Enterprise", 2014)

"In business, master data management comprises the processes, governance, policies, standards, and tools that consistently define and manage the critical data of an organization to provide a single point of reference." (Keith Holdaway, "Harness Oil and Gas Big Data with Analytics", 2014)

"The data that describes the important details of a business subject area such as customer, product, or material across the organization. Master data allows different applications and lines of business to use the same definitions and data regarding the subject area. Master data gives an accurate, 360-degree view of the business subject." (Jim Davis & Aiman Zeid, "Business Transformation: A Roadmap for Maximizing Organizational Insights", 2014)

"A new trend in IT, Master Data Management is composed of processes and tools that ultimately help an organization define and manage its master data." (Andrew Pham et al, "From Business Strategy to Information Technology Roadmap", 2016)

'It is a technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets. Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core entities of the enterprise including customers, prospects, citizens, suppliers, sites, hierarchies and chart of accounts." (Richard T Herschel, "Business Intelligence", 2019)

"The most critical data is called master data and the companioned discipline of master data management, which is about making the master data within the organization accessible, secure, transparent, and trustworthy." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale", 2020)

"An umbrella term that incorporates processes, policies, standards, tools and governance that define and manage all of an organization’s critical data in order to formulate one point of reference." (Solutions Review)

"The technology, tools, and processes required to create and maintain consistent and accurate lists of master data of an organization." (Microsoft)

"Master data management solutions provide the capabilities to create the unique and qualified reference of shared enterprise data, such as customer, product, supplier, employee, site, asset, and organizational data." (Forrester)

"Master data management (MDM) is the effort made by an organization to create one single master reference source for all critical business data, leading to fewer errors and less redundancy in business processes." (Informatica) [source]

"Master data management (MDM) is the process of defining, managing, and making use of an organization’s master data so it is visible and accessible via a single reference point." (MuleSoft) [source]

"Master data management (MDM) is the process of making sure an organization is always working with, and making decisions based on, one version of current, ‘true’ data - often referred to as a 'golden record'." (Talend) [source]

⛏️Data Management: Data Quality Management [DQM] (Definitions)

[Total Data Quality Management:] "An approach that manages data proactively as the outcome of a process, a valuable asset rather than the traditional view of data as an incidental by-product." (Karolyn Kerr, "Improving Data Quality in Health Care", 2009)

"The application of total quality management concepts and practices to improve data and information quality, including setting data quality policies and guidelines, data quality measurement (including data quality auditing and certification), data quality analysis, data cleansing and correction, data quality process improvement, and data quality education." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"Data Quality Management (DQM) is about employing processes, methods, and technologies to ensure the quality of the data meets specific business requirements." (Mark Allen & Dalton Cervo, "Strategy, Scope, and Approach" [in "Multi-Domain Master Data Management"], 2015)

"DQM is the management of company data in a manner aware of quality. It is a sub-function of data management and analyzes, improves and assures the quality of data in the company. DQM includes all activities, procedures and systems to achieve the data quality required by the business strategy. Among other things, DQM transfers approaches for the management of quality for physical goods to immaterial goods like data." (Boris Otto & Hubert Österle, "Corporate Data Quality", 2015)

"Data quality management (DQM) is a set of practices aimed at improving and maintaining the quality of data across a company’s business units." (altexsoft) [source]

"Data quality management is a set of practices that aim at maintaining a high quality of information. DQM goes all the way from the acquisition of data and the implementation of advanced data processes, to an effective distribution of data. It also requires a managerial oversight of the information you have." (Data Pine) [source]

"Data quality management is a setup process, which is aimed at achieving and maintaining high data quality. Its main stages involve the definition of data quality thresholds and rules, data quality assessment, data quality issues resolution, data monitoring and control." (ScienceSoft) [source]

"Data quality management is the act of ensuring suitable data quality." (Xplenty) [source]

"Data quality management provides a context-specific process for improving the fitness of data that’s used for analysis and decision making. The goal is to create insights into the health of that data using various processes and technologies on increasingly bigger and more complex data sets." (SAS) [source]

"Data quality management (DQM) refers to a business principle that requires a combination of the right people, processes and technologies all with the common goal of improving the measures of data quality that matter most to an enterprise organization." (BMC) [source]

"Put most simply, data quality management is the process of reviewing and updating your customer data to minimize inaccuracies and eliminate redundancies, such as duplicate customer records and duplicate mailings to the same address." (EDQ) [source]

Data Management : Data Fabric (Definitions)

"Enterprise data fabric (EDF) is a data layer that separates data sources from applications, providing the means to solve the gridlock prevalent in distributed environments such as grid computing, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and event-driven architecture (EDA)." (Information Management, 2010)

"A data fabric is an emerging data management and data integration design concept for attaining flexible, reusable and augmented data integration pipelines, services and semantics, in support of various operational and analytics use cases delivered across multiple deployment and orchestration platforms." (Jacob O Lund, "Demystifying the Data Fabric", 2020)

"A data fabric is a data management architecture that can optimize access to distributed data and intelligently curate and orchestrate it for self-service delivery to data consumers." (IBM, "Data Fabric", 2021) [source]

"A data fabric is a modern, distributed data architecture that includes shared data assets and optimized data management and integration processes that you can use to address today’s data challenges in a unified way." (Alice LaPlante, "Data Fabric as Modern Data Architecture", 2021)

"A data fabric is an emerging data management design for attaining flexible and reusable data integration pipelines, services and semantics. A data fabric supports various operational and analytics use cases delivered across multiple deployment and orchestration platforms. Data fabrics support a combination of different data integration styles and leverage active metadata, knowledge graphs, semantics and ML to automate and enhance data integration design and delivery." (Ehtisham Zaidi, "Data Fabric", Gartner's Hype Cycle for Data Management, 2021)

"Is a distributed Data Management platform whose objective is to combine various types of data storage, access, preparation, analytics, and security tools in a fully compliant manner to support seamless Data Management." (Michelle Knight, "What Is a Data Fabric?", 2021)

"A data fabric is a customized combination of architecture and technology. It uses dynamic data integration and orchestration to connect different locations, sources, and types of data. With the right structures and flows as defined within the data fabric platform, companies can quickly access and share data regardless of where it is or how it was generated." (SAP)

"A data fabric is a distributed, memory-based data management platform that uses cluster-wide resources - memory, CPU, network bandwidth, and optionally local disk – to manage application data and application logic (behavior). The data fabric uses dynamic replication and data partitioning techniques to offer continuous availability, very high performance, and linear scalability for data intensive applications, all without compromising on data consistency even when exposed to failure conditions." (VMware)

"A Data Fabric is a technology utilization and implementation design capable of multiple outputs and applied uses." (Gartner)

"A data fabric is an architecture and set of data services that provide consistent capabilities across a choice of endpoints spanning hybrid multicloud environments." (NetApp) [source]

"Data fabric is an end-to-end data integration and management solution, consisting of architecture, data management and integration software, and shared data that helps organizations manage their data. A data fabric provides a unified, consistent user experience and access to data for any member of an organization worldwide and in real-time." (Tibco) [source]

🎯🏭🗒️Sonia Mezzetta - Collected Quotes

"A data architecture needs to have the robustness and ability to support multiple data management and operational models to provide the necessary business value and agility to support an enterprise’s business strategy and capabilities." (Sonia Mezzetta, "Principles of Data Fabric", 2023)

"A data strategy must align with the business goals and overall framework of how data will be used and managed within an organization. It needs to include standards for how data will be discovered, integrated, accessed, shared, and protected. It needs to address how data will meet regulatory compliance policies, Master Data Management, and data democratization. There needs to be an assurance that both data and metadata have a quality control framework in place to achieve data trust. A data strategy needs to have a clear path on how an organization will accomplish data monetization." (Sonia Mezzetta, "Principles of Data Fabric", 2023)

"Data Fabric focuses on Self-Service data access via active metadata leveraging a composable set of tools and technologies. It offers the ability to discover, understand, and access data across hybrid and multi-cloud data landscapes with automation and Data Governance. It is primarily process and technology centric with flexibility in supporting diverse organizational models. On the other hand, Data Mesh is organizationally and process driven. It requires a technical implementation approach to execute its design. Data Mesh is at a higher level and Data Fabric is at a lower level. Data Fabric is capable of fulfilling Data Mesh’s key principles." (Sonia Mezzetta, "Principles of Data Fabric", 2023)

"Data Fabric is a distributed and composable architecture that is metadata and event driven. It’s use case agnostic and excels in managing and governing distributed data. It integrates dispersed data with automation, strong Data Governance, protection, and security. Data Fabric focuses on the Self-Service delivery of governed data." (Sonia Mezzetta, "Principles of Data Fabric", 2023)

"[Data Fabric] is not a single technology, such as data virtualization. […] It is not a single tool like a data catalog and it doesn’t have to be a single data storage system like a data warehouse. It represents a diverse set of tools, technologies, and storage systems that work together in a connected ecosystem via a distributed data architecture, with active metadata as the glue. It doesn’t just support centralized data management but also federated and decentralized data management. It excels in connecting distributed data. Data Fabric is not the same as Data Mesh. They are different data architectures that tackle the complexities of distributed data management using different but complementary approaches." (Sonia Mezzetta, "Principles of Data Fabric", 2023)

"Data Fabric supports a federated, decentralized, or centralized organization. To participate in Data Fabric, metadata is contributed in an automated manner and knowledge is populated from it to propel data management. Data Fabric is different from a Data Mesh design in that it supports decentralized, federated, and centralized organizations. Data Fabric’s objectives are to help an organization to evolve to a more mature level of data management by leveraging active metadata, which is a core prerequisite." (Sonia Mezzetta, "Principles of Data Fabric", 2023)

"Data Mesh is a design concept based on federated data and business domains. It applies product management thinking to data management with the outcome being Data Products. It’s technology agnostic and calls for a domain-centric organization with federated Data Governance." (Sonia Mezzetta, "Principles of Data Fabric", 2023)

"I emphasize this point as there are views in the industry that Data Fabric is a centralized storage architecture, which is not the case from my point of view. A Data Fabric architecture is driven by the needs and direction of the business architecture." (Sonia Mezzetta, "Principles of Data Fabric", 2023)

"Where Data Mesh differs from Data Fabric is that it has fixed requirements for the Self-Service platform focused on organizing and managing Data Products by business domain. Another difference is Data Fabric supports managing data as an asset and as a product. A Data Product can be composed of assets that have been governed and managed in a Data Fabric architecture. Data Fabric does not have these fixed requirements, although it inherently supports isolating data and Data Governance enforcement via metadata by business domain. You can think of a Data Mesh Self-Service data platform as supporting separate, independent companies (business domains), although the key criteria are that it does not create data silos and attains data sharing across these companies in a secure, quick, and easy manner. In Data Mesh, Data Products are created and managed by federated business domains and a data platform requires capabilities that enable data and policy federation. This is where a Data Fabric solution can also address Data Mesh’s requirements." (Sonia Mezzetta, "Principles of Data Fabric", 2023)

🎯Piethein Strengholt - Collected Quotes

"For advanced analytics, a well-designed data pipeline is a prerequisite, so a large part of your focus should be on automation. This is also the most difficult work. To be successful, you need to stitch everything together." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Best Practices for Enterprise Architecture", 2020)

"One of the patterns from domain-driven design is called bounded context. Bounded contexts are used to set the logical boundaries of a domain’s solution space for better managing complexity. It’s important that teams understand which aspects, including data, they can change on their own and which are shared dependencies for which they need to coordinate with other teams to avoid breaking things. Setting boundaries helps teams and developers manage the dependencies more efficiently." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Best Practices for Enterprise Architecture", 2020)

"The logical boundaries are typically explicit and enforced on areas with clear and higher cohesion. These domain dependencies can sit on different levels, such as specific parts of the application, processes, associated database designs, etc. The bounded context, we can conclude, is polymorphic and can be applied to many different viewpoints. Polymorphic means that the bounded context size and shape can vary based on viewpoint and surroundings. This also means you need to be explicit when using a bounded context; otherwise it remains pretty vague." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Best Practices for Enterprise Architecture", 2020)

"The transformation of a monolithic application into a distributed application creates many challenges for data management." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Best Practices for Enterprise Architecture", 2020)

"A domain aggregate is a cluster of domain objects that can be treated as a single unit. When you have a collection of objects of the same format and type that are used together, you can model them as a single object, simplifying their usage for other domains." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Modern Data Architecture with Data Mesh and Data Fabric" 2nd Ed., 2023)

"Decentralization involves risks, because the more you spread out activities across the organization, the harder it gets to harmonize strategy and align and orchestrate planning, let alone foster the culture and recruit the talent needed to properly manage your data." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Modern Data Architecture with Data Mesh and Data Fabric" 2nd Ed., 2023)

"Enterprises have difficulties in interpreting new concepts like the data mesh and data fabric, because pragmatic guidance and experiences from the field are missing. In addition to that, the data mesh fully embraces a decentralized approach, which is a transformational change not only for the data architecture and technology, but even more so for organization and processes. This means the transformation cannot only be led by IT; it’s a business transformation as well." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Modern Data Architecture with Data Mesh and Data Fabric" 2nd Ed., 2023)

"The data fabric is an approach that addresses today’s data management and scalability challenges by adding intelligence and simplifying data access using self-service. In contrast to the data mesh, it focuses more on the technology layer. It’s an architectural vision using unified metadata with an end-to-end integrated layer (fabric) for easily accessing, integrating, provisioning, and using data."  (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Modern Data Architecture with Data Mesh and Data Fabric" 2nd Ed., 2023)

"The data mesh is an exciting new methodology for managing data at large. The concept foresees an architecture in which data is highly distributed and a future in which scalability is achieved by federating responsibilities. It puts an emphasis on the human factor and addressing the challenges of managing the increasing complexity of data architectures." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale: Modern Data Architecture with Data Mesh and Data Fabric" 2nd Ed., 2023)

🕋Data Warehousing: Data Warehouse [DWH] (Definitions)

"A subject oriented, integrated, time variant, and non-volatile collection of summary and detailed historical data used to support the strategic decision-making processes for the corporation." (William H Inmon, "What is a Data Warehouse?", Prism Vol. 1 (1), 1995)

"A copy of transaction data specifically structured for query and analysis." (Ralph Kimball, The Data Warehouse Toolkit, 1996)

"A database specifically structured for query and analysis. A data warehouse typically contains data representing the business history of an organization. Data in a data warehouse is usually less detailed and longer lived than data from an OLTP system." (Microsoft Corporation, "Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 System Administration Training Kit", 1999)

"The conglomeration of an organization’s data warehouse staging and presentation areas, where operational data is specifically structured for query and analysis performance and ease-of-use." (Ralph Kimball & Margy Ross, "The Data Warehouse Toolkit" 2nd Ed, 2002)

"The data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, nonvolatile collection of data used to support the strategic decision-making process for the enterprise. It is the central point of data integration for business intelligence and is the source of data for the data marts, delivering a common view of enterprise data." (Claudia Imhoff et al, "Mastering Data Warehouse Design", 2003)

"A data warehouse is a set of computer databases specifically designed with related, historical blissful [high quality] data that assist in formulating decisions and taking action." (Margaret Y Chu, "Blissful Data", 2004)

"A set of computer databases specifically designed with related, historical blissful data that assist in formulating decisions and taking action." (Margaret Y Chu, "Blissful Data ", 2004)

"A collection of integrated, subject-oriented databases designed to support the DSS function, where each unit of data is relevant to some moment in time. The data warehouse contains atomic data and lightly summarized data." (William H Inmon, "Building the Data Warehouse", 2005)

"A database that can follow a Third Normal Form (3NF) or dimensional design and that houses a time-variant collection of data from multiple sources. It’s generally used to collect and store integrated sets of historical data from multiple operational systems and then feed one or more dependent data marts. In some cases, a data warehouse may also provide end user access to support enterprise views of data." (Sharon Allen & Evan Terry, "Beginning Relational Data Modeling" 2nd Ed., 2005)

"A database containing a copy of operational data that is organized for analytic purposes." (Christopher Adamson, "Mastering Data Warehouse Aggregates", 2006)

[Enterprise Data Warehouse] "A database that contains a copy of enterprise data, reorganized for analytic purposes. Subject areas within the enterprise data warehouse are called data marts." (Christopher Adamson, "Mastering Data Warehouse Aggregates", 2006)

"A database specifically structured for query and analysis. A data warehouse typically contains data representing the business history of an organization." (Thomas Moore, "MCTS 70-431: Implementing and Maintaining Microsoft SQL Server 2005", 2006)

"A relational database used as a repository for storing and analyzing numerical information that has been cleansed and verified." (Reed Jacobsen & Stacia Misner, "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Step by Step", 2006)

"A technology platform that stores business data for the purpose of strategic decision making. Data warehouses are normally the central integration point for large amounts of detailed, historical data from heterogeneous systems across the company to avail data for business intelligence." (Jill Dyché & Evan Levy, "Customer Data Integration", 2006)

"Central repository holding cleaned and transformed information needed by an organization to make decisions, usually extracted from an operational database." (Glenn J Myatt, "Making Sense of Data: A Practical Guide to Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Mining", 2006)

"A collection of integrated, subject-oriented databases designed to support the DSS function, where each unit of data is relevant to some moment in time. The data warehouse contains atomic data and lightly summarized data." (William H Inmon & Anthony Nesavich, "Tapping into Unstructured Data", 2007)

"A data structure that is optimized for distribution. It collects and stores integrated sets of historical data from multiple operational systems and feeds them to one or more data marts. (Standard definition from The Data Warehousing Institute)" (Steve Williams & Nancy Williams, "The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence", 2007)

"A specialised database containing consolidated historical data drawn from a number of existing databases to support strategic decision making." (Keith Gordon, "Principles of Data Management", 2007)

"Central repository holding cleaned and transformed information needed by an organization to make decisions, usually extracted from an operational database." (Glenn J Myatt, "Making Sense of Data: A Practical Guide to Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Mining", 2007)

"Data warehouse is a central repository for summarized and integrated data from operational databases and external data sources." (S Sumathi & S Esakkirajan, "Fundamentals of Relational Database Management Systems", 2007)

"A logical warehouse of data that gathers production and operational information from various departments of a corporation into a single data entity. This information is loaded regularly, which allows for careful analysis over a period of time." (Stuart Mudie et al, "BusinessObjects™ XI Release 2 for Dummies", 2008)

"A repository of data for offline use in building reports and analyzing historical data." (Rod Stephens, "Beginning Database Design Solutions", 2008)

"A data warehouse is a system of records (a business intelligence gathering system) that takes data from a company's operational databases and other data sources and transforms it into a structure conducive to business analysis." (Sivakumar Harinath et al, "Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® Analysis Services 2008 with MDX", 2009)

"A database designed for reporting and data analysis. A data warehouse typically contains data representing the business history of an organization." (Jim Joseph, "Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Unleashed", 2009)

"A large data store containing the organization’s historical data, which is used primarily for data analysis and data mining." (Judith Hurwitz et al, "Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies" 2nd Ed., 2009)

"An integrated, centralized decision support database and the related software programs used to collect, cleanse, transform, and store data from a variety of operational sources to support Business Intelligence. A Data Warehouse may also include dependent data marts." (DAMA International, The DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge 1st Ed., 2009)

"(1) A centralized database for collecting the data from numerous other systems so that they can be made available for management reporting. The database is close to 3rd Normal Form.  (2)  A system that includes the central database described in 1; plus procedures for extracting, transforming, and loading data from other systems; and one or more data marts that organize subsets of the data for particular reporting purposes." (David C Hay, "Data Model Patterns: A Metadata Map", 2010)

"[A] data warehouse is a collection of data designed to support management in the decision-making process. It is a subject oriented, integrated, time-variant, non-up datable collection of data used in support of management decision-making processes and business intelligence. It contains a wide variety of data that present a coherent picture of business condition at a single point of time. It is a unique kind of database which focuses on business intelligence, external data and time-variant data." (Vijay K Pallaw, "Database Management Systems" 2nd Ed., 2010)

"A data warehouse is a large, enterprise-wide database that acts as a central storage location for data that has been through the Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process. A data warehouse often includes historical data as well." (Ken Withee, "Microsoft Business Intelligence For Dummies", 2010)

[Active Data Warehouse (ADW):] "A data warehouse that is generally capable of supporting near-real-time updates, fast response times, and mixed workloads by leveraging well-architected data models, optimized ETL processes, and the use of workload management." (Martin Oberhofer et al, "The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture", 2010)

"A large, often enterprise-wide repository of data used for reporting and analysis. Data warehouses generally collect and manage data from a large number of operational and financial systems across an enterprise." (Janice M Roehl-Anderson, "IT Best Practices for Financial Managers", 2010) 

"A subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and historical collection of summary and detailed data used to support the decision-making and other reporting and analysis needs that require historical, point-in-time information. Data, once captured within the warehouse, is nonvolatile and relevant to a point in time." (David Lyle & John G Schmidt, "Lean Integration", 2010)

"A specialized type of database that is used to aggregate data from transaction databases for data analysis purposes, such as identifying and examining business trends, to support planning and decision making." (Linda Volonino & Efraim Turban, "Information Technology for Management" 8th Ed, 2011)

[Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW):] "A data repository of organizational data that is organized, analyzed, and used to enable more informed decision making and planning." (Linda Volonino & Efraim Turban, "Information Technology for Management" 8th Ed, 2011)

[federated data warehouse:] "1.A conceptual Data Warehouse made up of multiple decision support databases, potentially on multiple servers, but presented transparently to Business Intelligence users as a unified schema for query, analysis, and reporting. 2.An Enterprise Data Warehouse fed by extracts from departmental Data Warehouses and/or legacy Data Warehouses prior to their incorporation and/or retirement." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"The database that stores operations data for long periods of time." (Microsoft, "SQL Server 2012 Glossary", 2012)

"A database used for reporting and analysis." (Craig S Mullins, "Database Administration", 2012)

"A large data store containing the organization’s historical data, which is used primarily for data analysis and data mining. It is the data system of record." (Marcia Kaufman et al, "Big Data For Dummies", 2013)

"A shared repository of data, often used to support the centralized consolidation of information for decision support." (Evan Stubbs, "Delivering Business Analytics: Practical Guidelines for Best Practice", 2013)

"A shared repository of data, often used to support the centralized consolidation of information for decision support." (Evan Stubbs, "Delivering Business Analytics: Practical Guidelines for Best Practice", 2013)

"A store that provides data from the originating source or the operational data stores; it contains historical and derived data. Also known as an information warehouse." (Brenda L Dietrich et al, "Analytics Across the Enterprise", 2014)

"A subject-oriented, integrated, nonvolatile, time-variant collection of data in support of management’s decisions" (Daniel Linstedt & W H Inmon, "Data Architecture: A Primer for the Data Scientist", 2014)

"A large data store containing the organization’s historical data, which is used primarily for data analysis and data mining. It is the data system of record." (Judith S Hurwitz, "Cognitive Computing and Big Data Analytics", 2015)

"A centralized database system which captures data and allows later analysis of the collected data." (Hamid R Arabnia et al, "Application of Big Data for National Security", 2015)

"A secondary database that holds older data for analysis. In some applications, you may want to analyze the data and store modified or aggregated forms in the warehouse instead of keeping every outdated record." (Rod Stephens, "Beginning Software Engineering", 2015)

"Decision-making data base containing the totality of a business’ decision-making data (all subjects)." (Fernando Iafrate, "From Big Data to Smart Data", 2015) 

[Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW):] "A clean data store created to merge and store data from different sources for enterprise data analysis." (David K Pham, "From Business Strategy to Information Technology Roadmap", 2016)

"A granular, time-variant, structured store of historical data in a neutral, nonredundant format for multiple uses. Its purpose is the reuse of data." (Gregory Lampshire et al, "The Data and Analytics Playbook", 2016)

"Electronic storehouses where vast amounts of data are arrayed, integrated, categorised, stored, and sold." (K  N Krishnaswamy et al, "Management Research Methodology: Integration of Principles, Methods and Techniques", 2016)

"A repository for storing business-relevant data." (Jonathan Ferrar et al, "The Power of People", 2017)

"A very large database designed to support decision making in organizations. It is usually batch updated and structured for rapid online queries and managerial summaries. A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, nonvolatile collection of data." (Daniel J Power & Ciara Heavin, "Decision Support, Analytics, and Business Intelligence" 3rd Ed., 2017)

"A data warehouse is a repository for all the data that an enterprise collects from internal and external sources." (Amar Sahay, "Business Analytics" Vol. I, 2018)

"A data warehouse is a repository of enterprise data used for reporting and analysis." (Michelle Gutzait et al, "Hands-On Data Warehousing with Azure Data Factory", 2018) 

"A subject-oriented collection of data that is used to support strategic decision making. The warehouse is the central point of data integration for business intelligence. It is the source of data for data marts within an enterprise and delivers a common view of enterprise data." (Sybase, "Open Server Server-Library/C Reference Manual", 2019)

[Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW):] "system used for analysis and reporting that consists of central repositories of integrated data from a wide spectrum of different sources." (Francesco Corea, "An Introduction to Data: Everything You Need to Know About AI, Big Data and Data Science", 2019)

"A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and nonvolatile collection of data that supports management’s decision-making process." (Piethein Strengholt, "Data Management at Scale", 2020)

"A data warehouse is a central storage for all data that an enterprise’s various business systems collect." (Logi Analytics) [source]

"A data warehouse is a data management solution to store large quantities of historical business data, performing queries to support various business intelligence and analytics use cases." (Qlik) [source]

"A data warehouse is a database designed to enable business intelligence activities: it exists to help users understand and enhance their organization's performance. It is designed for query and analysis rather than for transaction processing, and usually contains historical data derived from transaction data, but can include data from other sources. Data warehouses separate analysis workload from transaction workload and enable an organization to consolidate data from several sources." (Oracle)

"A data warehouse is a relational database that is designed for analytical rather than transactional work. It collects and aggregates data from one or many sources so it can be analyzed to produce business insights. It serves as a federated repository for all or certain data sets collected by a business’s operational systems." (snowflake) [source]

"A data warehouse is a repository for data generated and collected by an enterprise's various operational systems." (Techtarget) [source]

"A data warehouse is a storage architecture designed to hold data extracted from transaction systems, operational data stores and external sources. The warehouse then combines that data in an aggregate, summary form suitable for enterprise-wide data analysis and reporting for predefined business needs." (Gartner)

"A data warehouse is a system used to do quick analysis of business trends using data from many sources." (KDnuggets)

[Big data warehouse:] "A specialized, cohesive set of data repositories andplatforms that supports a broad variety of analytics running on-premises, inthe cloud, or in a hybrid environment. BDW leverages traditional and new bigdata technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, columnar and row-based datawarehouses, ETL and streaming, and elastic in-memory and storage frameworks." (Forrester)

[Cloud data warehouse:] "An on-demand, secure, and scalable self-service data warehouse that automates the provisioning, administration, tuning, backup, and recovery to accelerate analytics and actionable insights while minimizing administration requirements." (Forrester)

"A database, typically very large, containing the historical data of an enterprise. Used for decision support or business intelligence, it organizes data and allows coordinated updates and loads." (Microstrategy)

"A large store of data drawing from a wide range of sources that can be processed, split, and analyzed to extract insights that guide management decisions. Data warehouses are typically relational databases that contain historical data and are designed for query and analysis." (Insight Software)

"A record of an enterprise’s past transactional and operational information, stored in a database. Data warehousing is not meant for current 'live' data; rather, data from the production databases are copied to the data warehouse so that queries can be performed without disturbing the performance or the stability of the production systems." (Appian)

"A system used for data analytics. They are a central location of integrated data from other more disparate sources, storing both current (real-time) and historical data which can then be used to create trends reports." (Solutions Review)

"An implementation of an informational database used to store sharable data sourced from an operational database-of-record. It is typically a subject database that allows users to tap into a company's vast store of operational data to track and respond to business trends and facilitate forecasting and planning efforts." (Information Management)

"The database that stores operations data for long periods of time." (Microsoft)

[Enterprise data warehouse:] "A repository of information that is used for reporting and analytics. It includes key data management functions, such as concurrency, security, storage, processing, SQL access, and integration." (Forrester)

[Enterprise data warehouse:] "a single database or set of databases that allow all of an organisation’s data to be stored in a central repository ideally in relationship to each other." (BI System Builders)

"In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis. DWs are central repositories of integrated data from one or more disparate sources. They store current and historical data and are used for creating trending reports for senior management reporting such as annual and quarterly comparisons. The data stored in the warehouse is uploaded from the operational systems (such as marketing, sales, etc.)" (Wikipedia)

🔬Data Science: Big Data (Definitions)

"Big Data: when the size and performance requirements for data management become significant design and decision factors for implementing a data management and analysis system. For some organizations, facing hundreds of gigabytes of data for the first time may trigger a need to reconsider data management options. For others, it may take tens or hundreds of terabytes before data size becomes a significant consideration." (Jimmy Guterman, 2009)

"A buzzword for the challenges of and approaches to working with data sets that are too big to manage with traditional tools, such as relational databases. So called NoSQL databases, clustered data processing tools like MapReduce, and other tools are used to gather, store, and analyze such data sets." (Dean Wampler, "Functional Programming for Java Developers", 2011)

"Big data: techniques and technologies that make handling data at extreme scale economical." (Brian Hopkins, "Big Data, Brewer, And A Couple Of Webinars", 2011) [source]

"Big Data is data whose scale, distribution, diversity, and/or timeliness require the use of new technical architectures and analytics to enable insights that unlock new sources of business value." (McKinsey & Co., "Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity", 2011)

"Data volumes that are exceptionally large, normally greater than 100 Terabyte and more commonly refer to the Petabyte and Exabyte range. Big data has begun to be used when discussing Data Warehousing and analytic solutions where the volume of data poses specific challenges that are unique to very large volumes of data including: data loading, modeling, cleansing, and analytics, and are often solved using massively parallel processing, or parallel processing and distributed data solutions." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"Big data is data that exceeds the processing capacity of conventional database systems. The data is too big, moves too fast, or doesn’t fit the strictures of your database architectures. To gain value from this data, you must choose an alternative way to process it." (Edd Wilder-James, "What is big data?", 2012) [source]

"A collection of data whose very size, rate of accumulation, or increased complexity makes it difficult to analyze and comprehend in a timely and accurate manner." (Kenneth A Shaw, "Integrated Management of Processes and Information", 2013)

"A colloquial term referring to exceedingly large datasets that are otherwise unwieldy to deal with in a reasonable amount of time in the absence of specialized tools. They are different from normal data in terms of volume, velocity, and variety and typically require unique approaches for capture, processing, analysis, search, and visualization." (Evan Stubbs, "Delivering Business Analytics: Practical Guidelines for Best Practice", 2013)

"Big data is the term increasingly used to describe the process of applying serious computing power – the latest in machine learning and artificial intelligence – to seriously massive and often highly complex sets of information." (Microsoft, 2013) [source]

"Big data is what happened when the cost of storing information became less than the cost of making the decision to throw it away." (Tim O’Reilly, [email correspondence, 2013)

"The capability to manage a huge volume of disparate data, at the right speed and within the right time frame, to allow real-time analysis and reaction. Big data is typically broken down by three characteristics, including volume (how much data), velocity (how fast that data is processed), and variety (the various types of data)." (Marcia Kaufman et al, "Big Data For Dummies", 2013)

"A colloquial term referring to datasets that are otherwise unwieldy to deal with in a reasonable amount of time in the absence of specialized tools. Common characteristics include large amounts of data (volume), different types of data (variety), and ever-increasing speed of generation (velocity). They typically require unique approaches for capture, processing, analysis, search, and visualization." (Evan Stubbs, "Big Data, Big Innovation", 2014)

"An extremely large database which generally defies standard methods of analysis." (Owen P. Hall Jr., "Teaching and Using Analytics in Management Education", 2014)

"Datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze." (Xiuli He et al, Supply Chain Analytics: Challenges and Opportunities, 2014)

"More data than can be processed by today's database systems, or acutely high volume, velocity, and variety of information assets that demand IG to manage and leverage for decision-making insights and cost management." (Robert F Smallwood, "Information Governance: Concepts, Strategies, and Best Practices", 2014)

"The term that refers to data that has one or more of the following dimensions, known as the four Vs: Volume, Variety, Velocity, and Veracity." (Brenda L Dietrich et al, "Analytics Across the Enterprise", 2014)

"A collection of models, techniques and algorithms that aim at representing, managing, querying and mining large-scale amounts of data (mainly semi-structured data) in distributed environments (e.g., Clouds)." (Alfredo Cuzzocrea & Mohamed M Gaber, "Data Science and Distributed Intelligence", 2015)

"A process to deliver decision-making insights. The process uses people and technology to quickly analyze large amounts of data of different types (traditional table structured data and unstructured data, such as pictures, video, email, and Tweets) from a variety of sources to produce a stream of actionable knowledge." (James R Kalyvas & Michael R Overly, "Big Data: A Businessand Legal Guide", 2015)

"A relative term referring to data that is difficult to process with conventional technology due to extreme values in one or more of three attributes: volume (how much data must be processed), variety (the complexity of the data to be processed) and velocity (the speed at which data is produced or at which it arrives for processing). As data management technologies improve, the threshold for what is considered big data rises. For example, a terabyte of slow-moving simple data was once considered big data, but today that is easily managed. In the future, a yottabyte data set may be manipulated on desktop, but for now it would be considered big data as it requires extraordinary measures to process." (Judith S Hurwitz, "Cognitive Computing and Big Data Analytics", 2015)

"Big data is a discipline that deals with processing, storing, and analyzing heterogeneous (structured/semistructured/unstructured) large data sets that cannot be handled by traditional information management technologies that have been used to process structured data. Gartner defined big data based on the three Vs: volume, velocity, and variety." (Saumya Chaki, "Enterprise Information Management in Practice", 2015)

"Records that are so large (terabytes and exabytes) and diverse (from sensors to social media data) that they require new, powerful technologies for storage, management, analysis and visualization." (Boris Otto & Hubert Österle, "Corporate Data Quality", 2015)

"Term used to describe the exponential growth, variety, and availability of data, both structured and unstructured." (Hamid R Arabnia et al, "Application of Big Data for National Security", 2015)

"A broad term for large and complex data sets that traditional data processing applications are inadequate. Challenges include analysis, capture, data curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, and information privacy. The term often refers simply to the use of predictive analytics or other certain advanced methods to extract value from data, and seldom to a particular size of data set." (Suren Behari, "Data Science and Big Data Analytics in Financial Services: A Case Study", 2016)

"A combination of facts and artifacts drawn from a myriad of sources and stored without regard to rational or normalized disciplines or structures." (Gregory Lampshire, "The Data and Analytics Playbook", 2016)

"A term that describes a large dataset that grows in size over time. It refers to the size of dataset that exceeds the capturing, storage, management, and analysis of traditional databases. The term refers to the dataset that has large, more varied, and complex structure, accompanies by difficulties of data storage, analysis, and visualization. Big Data are characterized with their high-volume, -velocity and –variety information assets." (Kenneth C C Yang & Yowei Kang, "Real-Time Bidding Advertising: Challenges and Opportunities for Advertising Curriculum, Research, and Practice", 2016)

"Big data is a blanket term for any collection of data sets so large or complex that it becomes difficult to process them using traditional data management techniques such as, for example, the RDBMS (relational database management systems)." (Davy Cielen et al, "Introducing Data Science", 2016)

"For digital resources, inexpensive storage and high bandwidth have largely eliminated capacity as a constraint for organizing systems, with an exception for big data, which is defined as a collection of data that is too big to be managed by typical database software and hardware architectures." (Robert J Glushko, "The Discipline of Organizing: Professional Edition, 4th Ed", 2016)

"Large sets of data that are leveraged to make better business decisions. Retail data can be sales, product inventory, e-mail offers, customer information, competitor pricing, product descriptions, social media, and much more." (Brittany Bullard, "Style and Statistics", 2016)

"A term used to describe large sets of structured and unstructured data. Data sets are continually increasing in size and may grow too large for traditional storage and retrieval. Data may be captured and analyzed as it is created and then stored in files." (Daniel J Power & Ciara Heavin, "Decision Support, Analytics, and Business Intelligence" 3rd Ed., 2017)

"Datasets of structured and unstructured information that are so large and complex that they cannot be adequately processed and analyzed with traditional data tools and applications. |" (Jonathan Ferrar et al, "The Power of People", 2017)

"Big data are often defined in terms of the three Vs: the extreme volume of data, the variety of the data types, and the velocity at which the data must be processed." (John D Kelleher & Brendan Tierney, "Data science", 2018)

"Very large data volumes that are complex and varied, and often collected and must be analyzed in real time." (Daniel J. Power & Ciara Heavin, "Data-Based Decision Making and Digital Transformation", 2018)

"A generic term that designates the massive volume of data that is generated by the increasing use of digital tools and information systems. The term big data is used when the amount of data that an organization has to manage reaches a critical volume that requires new technological approaches in terms of storage, processing, and usage. Volume, velocity, and variety are usually the three criteria used to qualify a database as 'big data'." (Soraya Sedkaoui, "Big Data Analytics for Entrepreneurial Success", 2019)

"Big data is high-volume, high-velocity and/or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation." (Thomas Ochs & Ute A Riemann, "IT Strategy Follows Digitalization", 2019)

"The capability to manage a huge volume of disparate data, at the right speed and within the right time frame, to allow real time analysis and reaction." (K Hariharanath, "BIG Data: An Enabler in Developing Business Models in Cloud Computing Environments", 2019)

"A term used to refer to the massive datasets generated in the digital age. Both the volume and speed at which data are generated is far greater than in the past and requires powerful computing technologies." (Osman Kandara & Eugene Kennedy, "Educational Data Mining: A Guide for Educational Researchers", 2020)

"Refers to data sets that are so voluminous and complex that traditional data processing application software is inadequate to deal with them." (James O Odia & Osaheni T Akpata, "Role of Data Science and Data Analytics in Forensic Accounting and Fraud Detection", 2021)

"The evolving term that describes a large volume of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data that has the potential to be mined for information and used in machine learning projects and other advanced analytics applications." (Nenad Stefanovic, "Big Data Analytics in Supply Chain Management", 2021)

"The term 'big data' is related to gathering and storing extra-large volume of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data with high Velocity and Variability to be used in advanced analytics applications." (Ahmad M Kabil, Integrating Big Data Technology Into Organizational Decision Support Systems, 2021)

"A collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications." (Board International) 

"A collection of data so large that it cannot be stored, transmitted or processed by traditional means." (Open Data Handbook) 

"an accumulation of data that is too large and complex for processing by traditional database management tools" (Merriam-Webster)

"Extremely large data sets that may be analyzed to reveal patterns and trends and that are typically too complex to be dealt with using traditional processing techniques." (Solutions Review)

"is a term for very large and complex datasets that exceed the ability of traditional data processing applications to deal with them. Big data technologies include data virtualization, data integration tools, and search and knowledge discovery tools." (Accenture)

"The practices and technology that close the gap between the data available and the ability to turn that data into business insight." (Forrester)

"Big data is a term applied to data sets whose size or type is beyond the ability of traditional relational databases to capture, manage and process the data with low latency. Big data has one or more of the following characteristics: high volume, high velocity or high variety." (IBM) [source]

"Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data – both structured and unstructured – that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis. But it’s not the amount of data that’s important. It’s what organizations do with the data that matters. Big data can be analyzed for insights that lead to better decisions and strategic business moves." (SAS) [source]

"Big data is a combination of structured, semistructured and unstructured data collected by organizations that can be mined for information and used in machine learning projects, predictive modeling and other advanced analytics applications." (Techtarget)

"Big data is a term used for large data sets that include structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data." (Xplenty) [source]

"Big data is high-volume, high-velocity and/or high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing that enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation." (Gartner)

"Big data is the catch-all term used to describe gathering, analyzing, and storing massive amounts of digital information to improve operations." (Talend) [source]

"Big data refers to the 21st-century phenomenon of exponential growth of business data, and the challenges that come with it, including holistic collection, storage, management, and analysis of all the data that a business owns or uses." (Informatica) [source]

✏️John Hoffmann - Collected Quotes

"A useful way to think about tables and graphics is to visualize layers. Just as photographic files may be manipulated in photo editing software using layers, data presentations are constructed by imagining that layers of an image are placed one on top of another. There are three general layers that apply to visual data presentations: (a) a frame that is typically a rectangle or matrix, (b) axes and coordinate systems (for graphics), and (c) data presented as numbers or geometric objects." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017)

"Also known as line charts or line plots, this type of graphic displays a series of data points using line segments. […] Do not include too many lines, especially if they are difficult to distinguish. […] it is best to label the lines directly rather than use a legend. […] It is not a good idea to use line graphs with unordered categorical (nominal) data These graphs are simpler to understand when the data are ordered in some way. […] Visual acuity is enhanced when the lines do not touch the x- or y-axis […] There is no need, except under exceptional circumstances, to include a marker to show at what point the line matches a specific value of the x- and y-axes. Line graphs are designed to display patterns and trends rather than data points." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017)

"Clarity is related to two other principles of good data presentation: precision and efficiency. Precision refers to ensuring that the data are presented accurately with minimal error. This is a topic that is equally important to data presentation as it is to data management. Always keep in mind: don’t mislead the audience. As already mentioned, people can be fooled by visual images, but they can also be misled by the myth of the infallible graphic. This refers to a tendency to believe there is an important association among concepts simply because they are correlated." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017)

"Contrasts can be a help or a hindrance. Our eyes are drawn to bright colors on muted backgrounds. In addition, warm colors, such as red, are more likely to get attention than cool colors (although the relative brightness affects this phenomenon). Objects in color that are included in black and white or grayscale visuals are quite effective at drawing the eye. Thus, using color to highlight certain parts of a graphic or table can be valuable. However, avoid using these strategies if they will draw attention to extraneous or trivial parts of the data presentation." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017) 

"If colors are used for different bars in a graphic, use distinguishable shades of the same color rather than distinct colors. If lines are in color in a graph, use those that are easy to discriminate, such as red and blue. But be careful of lines that cross since a red line is perceived as in front of a blue line. If colors are employed in a table, used them to highlight the relevant comparisons you wish to make. […] Use colors to highlight important parts of the graphic. […] But be careful because this practice is easily abused." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017)

"It is generally a good idea to avoid gridlines, vertical lines, and double lines. Use single horizontal lines to separate the title, headers, and content. Lines are also employed to identify column spanners, which are used to group particular columns of data." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017)

"Many data presentations spice up the image with background images, embedded visuals, ornate typeface, and bright colors. Our eyes may be drawn to these aspects, rather than to the patterns in the data, thus breaking the principles of clarity and efficiency. It is usually best to take out the clutter: remove the chartjunk." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017) 

"People tend to comprehend visual images quicker and with fewer errors than words on a page. Visual images also activate memories better than words." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017) 

"Reference tables show a lot of data with a high degree of precision. They are designed generally to provide users with a way to fi nd particular pieces of data. […] Summary tables provide some type of extraction of data from a reference table or a spreadsheet. The data are usually manipulated, analyzed, or summarized in some way, such as by sorting or providing summary statistics (means, percentages, ranges). The results of statistical models are usually presented in research reports using this type of table." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017)

"Some experts argue that axes - in particular, the y-axis - should always begin at zero. However, when differences are small, yet the size of the numbers is relatively large, this can make detection difficult. On the other hand, viewers can be misled by manipulating the axes to magnify differences. One guideline is to always use a zero bottom point when judging absolute magnitudes. This is often the case in bar charts." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017) 

"Titles should clearly specify the content of the table or the graphic. What is being presented? Means and standard deviations? Confidence intervals? Percentages? Trends over time? Furthermore, consider the context, such as when and where the data were gathered, as well as the name of the dataset if using secondary data (although the dataset may also be identified in a source note)." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017) 

"Whichever scale is used to represent the data, it is important to keep it consistent in data presentations. The principles of clarity, precision, and efficiency are rarely met if the measurement scales change within tables." (John Hoffmann, "Principles of Data Management and Presentation", 2017) 

🗃️Data Management: Data Strategy (Just the Quotes)

"Data strategy is one of the most ubiquitous and misunderstood topics in the information technology (IT) industry. Most corporations' data strategy and IT infrastructure were not planned, but grew out of "stovepipe" applications over time with little to no regard for the goals and objectives of the enterprise. This stovepipe approach has produced the highly convoluted and inflexible IT architectures so prevalent in corporations today." (Sid Adelman et al, "Data Strategy", 2005)

"The chaos without a data strategy is not as obvious, but the indicators abound: dirty data, redundant data, inconsistent data, the inability to integrate, poor performance, terrible availability, little accountability, users who are increasingly dissatisfied with the performance of IT, and the general feeling that things are out of control." (Sid Adelman et al, "Data Strategy", 2005)

"The vision of a data strategy that fits your organization has to conform to the overall strategy of IT, which in turn must conform to the strategy of the business. Therefore, the vision should conform to and support where the organization wants to be in 5 years." (Sid Adelman et al, "Data Strategy", 2005)

"Working without a data strategy is analogous to a company allowing each department and each person within each department to develop its own financial chart of accounts. This empowerment allows each person in the organization to choose his own numbering scheme. Existing charts of accounts would be ignored as each person exercises his or her own creativity." (Sid Adelman et al, "Data Strategy" 1st Ed., 2005)

"Data is great, but strategy is better!" (Steven Sinofsky, Harvard Business School, 2013)

"Strategy is everything. Without it, data, big or otherwise, is essentially useless. A bad strategy is worse than useless because it can be highly damaging to the organization. A bad strategy can divert resources, waste time, and demoralize employees. This would seem to be self-evident but in practice, strategy development is not quite so straightforward. There are numerous reasons why a strategy is MIA from the beginning, falls apart mid-project, or is destroyed in a head-on collision with another conflicting business strategy." (Pam Baker, "Data Divination: Big Data Strategies", 2015)

"The overall data strategy should be focused on continuously discovering ways to improve the business through refinement, innovation, and solid returns, both in the short and long terms. Project-specific strategies should lead to a specific measurable and actionable end for that effort. This should be immediately followed with ideas about what can be done from there, which in turn should ultimately lead to satisfying the goals in the overall big data strategy and reshaping it as necessary too." (Pam Baker, "Data Divination: Big Data Strategies", 2015)

"A data strategy should include business plans to use information to competitive advantage and support enterprise goals. Data strategy must come from an understanding of the data needs inherent in the business strategy: what data the organization needs, how it will get the data, how it will manage it and ensure its reliability over time, and how it will utilize it. Typically, a data strategy requires a supporting Data Management program strategy – a plan for maintaining and improving the quality of data, data integrity, access, and security while mitigating known and implied risks. The strategy must also address known challenges related to data management." (DAMA International, "DAMA-DMBOK: Data Management Body of Knowledge", 2017)

"A good data strategy is not determined by what data is readily or potentially available - ​​​​​​​ it’​​​​​​​s about what your business wants to achieve, and how data can help you get there." (Bernard Marr, ​​​​​​​"Data Strategy", 2017)

"A sound data strategy requires that the data contained in a company’s single source of truth (SSOT) is of high quality, granular, and standardized, and that multiple versions of the truth (MVOTs) are carefully controlled." (Leandro DalleMule & Thomas H Davenport, "What’s Your Data Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 2017) [link]

"Companies that have not yet built a data strategy and a strong data-management function need to catch up very fast or start planning for their exit." (Leandro DalleMule & Thomas H Davenport, "What’s Your Data Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 2017) [link]

"How a company’s data strategy changes in direction and velocity will be a function of its overall strategy, culture, competition, and market." (Leandro DalleMule & Thomas H Davenport, "What’s Your Data Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 2017) [link] 

"[…] if companies want to avoid drowning in data, they need to develop a smart [data] strategy that focuses on the data they really need to achieve their goals. In other words, this means defining the business-critical questions that need answering and then collecting and analysing only that data which will answer those questions." (Bernard Marr, ​​​​​​​"Data Strategy", 2017)

"Start by reviewing existing data management activities, such as who creates and manages data, who measures data quality, or even who has ‘data’ in their job title. Survey the organization to find out who may already be fulfilling needed roles and responsibilities. Such individuals may hold different titles. They are likely part of a distributed organization and not necessarily recognized by the enterprise. After compiling a list of ‘data people,’ identify gaps. What additional roles and skill sets are required to execute the data strategy? In many cases, people in other parts of the organization have analogous, transferrable skill sets. Remember, people already in the organization bring valuable knowledge and experience to a data management effort." (DAMA International, "DAMA-DMBOK: Data Management Body of Knowledge", 2017)

"In truth, all three of these perspectives - process, technology, and data - are needed to create a good data strategy. Each type of person approaches things differently and brings different perspectives to the table. Think of this as another aspect of diversity. Just as a multicultural team and a team with different educational backgrounds will produce a better result, so will a team that includes people with process, technology and data perspectives." (Mike Fleckenstein & Lorraine Fellows, "Modern Data Strategy", 2018)

"A data strategy is the opportunity to bring data, one of the most important assets your organisation has, to the fore and to drive the future direction of the organisation." (Ian Wallis, "Data Strategy: From definition to execution", 2021)

"Data strategy is even less understood [thank business strategy], so the chances of success can be further decreased, simply because you need organisation-wide commitment and buy-in to succeed. Data does not exist in a bubble; it is not the preserve of a function that can fix it for all, detached from touching everyone else. It is core to how you run the organisation, and without a focus on where you are heading, it is going to trip the organisation up at every turn – regulatory compliance; operational effectiveness; financial performance; customer and employee experience; essentially, the efficiency in managing virtually every activity in the organisation." (Ian Wallis, "Data Strategy: From definition to execution", 2021)

"I am using ‘data strategy’ as an overarching term to describe a far broader set of capabilities from which sub-strategies can be developed to focus on particular facets of the strategy, such as management information (MI) and reporting; analytics, machine learning and AI; insight; and, of course, data management." (Ian Wallis, "Data Strategy: From definition to execution", 2021)

"It is also important to regard the data strategy as a living document. Do not regard it as a masterpiece, never to be reviewed, amended or critiqued within the time frame it covers, but instead see it as a strategy that can flex to the changing demands of an organisation." (Ian Wallis, "Data Strategy: From definition to execution", 2021)

"In the same vein, data strategy is often a misnomer for a much wider scope of coverage, but the lack of coherence in how we use the language has led to data strategy being perceived to cover data management activities all the way through to exploitation of data in the broadest sense. The occasional use of information strategy, intelligence strategy or even data exploitation strategy may differentiate, but the lack of a common definition on what we mean tends to lead to data strategy being used as a catch-all for the more widespread coverage such a document would typically include. Much of this is due to the generic use of the term ‘data’ to cover everything from its capture, management, governance through to reporting, analytics and insight." (Ian Wallis, "Data Strategy: From definition to execution", 2021)

"Many organisations start a data strategy from a need to get data into some sort of organised state in which it is feasible to demonstrate compliance. In my opinion, compliance should be a component of a data strategy, not the data strategy in itself." (Ian Wallis, "Data Strategy: From definition to execution", 2021)

"The data strategy should answer the questions: Where are we going? What are we trying to achieve? How does this data strategy fit with the vision, mission and strategy of the organisation? The digital strategy should answer the overarching question: How are we are planning to achieve this?" (Alison Holt [Ed.], Data Governance: Governing data for sustainable business", 2021)

"The key for a successful data strategy is to align it clearly with the corporate strategy. The data strategy is a crucial enabler of the corporate strategy, and the data strategy should clearly call out those components that have a clear line of sight to delivering, or enabling, the corporate goals. If the data strategy does not align to the corporate goals it will be a much more challenging task to get the wider organisation to buy into it, not least because it will fail to have any resonance with the objectives of the organisational leaders and be regarded as optional at best." (Ian Wallis, "Data Strategy: From definition to execution", 2021)

"Right now, the biggest challenge for organizations working on their data strategy might not have to do with technology at all. [...] It’s an understandable problem: to a degree that is perpetually underestimated, becoming data-driven is about the ability of people and organizations to adapt to change." (Randy Bean, "Why Becoming a Data-Driven Organization Is So Hard", Harvard Business Review, 2022) [link]

See also the quotes on Strategy and Tactics.