I wish I'd said that

Have you ever had one of those moments when you thought "I wish I'd said that"?
Well, I was getting my head together in preparation for my conference presentation next week at Enterprise Data World in Chicago.  Well, although I've already submitted my slides for a talk on Data Virtualisation as a viable Data Integration approach, I thought I'd do some last minute research. From companies I've worked with I'm very aware of the benefits Data Virtualisation can bring particualrly for flexibility & rapid time to solution.  But I wanted to get some more quotes - so off to friendly Google I went.  Pretty quickly I came across a variety of finds including  
“The difficulties in dealing with the ongoing data explosion and the proliferation of ever-more diverse data sources has resulted in companies being open to reevaluating their data integration strategies,”
Wow - just what I'm after .  A little bit more digging & I also found 
“The availability of a new generation of data virtualization tools and business intelligence (BI) solutions which easily integrate with ERP systems has undoubtedly provided real benefit in reducing overall time to solution and a business opportunity for those organizations who best leverage those data assets,”  
Excellent - I'll use that last one in my presentation.  Now, who said it?  Well apparantly I did :)

National Australia MDM, Governance and Regulations

National Australia Group Europe, MDM, DG & Financial Regulations:  Tuesday 22nd March 2011, 10:05am  IRM MDM/DG Europe Conference.

Martin Campbell & Tim Franklin described Clydesdale Bank's (part of NAGE) approach to Customer MDM and Data. governance. Campbell described the Bank's challenges & importance of executive buy in. The FSCS regulatory issues were of utmost importance & fixed time constraints for these had to be achieved.
Franklin outlined the IPL Information Architecture Framework (IAF) and how the governance component of the IAF was expanded to initially benchmark & then form the basis of the Bank's Data Governance approach.

Of particular interest was the importance of establishing principles & getting early buy in for these; the IPL IAF proved to be a useful jump start here.

Overall very interesting & practical.

MDM the next decade; Go early go governance

MDM the next decade; Go early go governance: Tuesday 22nd March 9AM at the MDM/DG 2011 Europe conference.

Aaron Zornes presented some interesting statistics and speculation regarding the future of MDM. I agree with the thought that the trend is towards pro-active DG for MDM
Despite the European tag on the talk both the spelling and the content was still very US centric. Most surprising was continual mention of ETL and SOA technologies to support DG - fine in themselves, but very surprising that nothing was mentioned on data federation/virtualisation.  This made me question just how up to date the thinking really is.
Overall I came away rather disappointed.

I'm presenting at Data Governance 2011 - London

Monday 21st - Wednesday 23rd March sees the 2011 IRM MDM/ DG Europe Conference in London. On Wednesday afternoon I'm presenting a case study with Colin Wood on Clinical Data Governance.  If you're in town at the conference, be sure to stop by and say hello.

BA Air Miles - What's the point?

Massively frustrated at the unavailability of seats that you can use BA miles on.
As a loyal BA customer over the years I'm now seriously wondering just what is the point.


I've got lots of miles and Amex companion vouchers. Back around Christmas my family & I thought we'd like to do a mega holiday in July, August or September this year, particularly having had two family bereavements in 2010. We fancied San Francisco, Vancouver, Australia or New Zealand and have enough miles for all 4 of us to go First or Business Class. After several days of searching availability & then phoning BA we were told there are no available miles redemption seats - to any of those destinations.  This despite availability showing if you buy with cash. "What about buy with cash & upgrade with miles" I inquired. Can't do that either :(    What about nearby cities LA, Seattle?  No BA air miles seats available to those either!


Just this week I again tried to use some BA miles, this time for a run of the mill business trip to Chicago in mid April. I received the same story again. No availability of any miles redemption seats. Once again I tried to buy with cash & upgrade with miles and once again was told no go despite lots of availability showing if you buy with cash.


So I'm wondering, unless you book miles redemption seats a full year in advance (apparently that's when the paltry few actually get released) then just what is the point in being a loyal customer & collecting BA miles?

Data modelling as art

Have you come across Data Modellers who exhibit OCD type behaviour when it comes to laying out models?

This often manifests itself as obsessive behaviour to eliminate crossing lines (BTW I think you should strive to minimise crossing lines), or the addition of not very subtle layout and annotation.  Frequently this steers me to think they believe their Data Models are works of art.

But is it art……..

Well funnily enough when I was recently in Philadelphia I went to the Art Museum and in the modern & contemporary gallery I saw this picture.

Standing in front of it I was approached by the gallery curator who said “Interesting isn’t it?  What does it say to you?”

“it’s an unnamed entity” I said

“Wow – that’s deep, I’ve not heard that before” she replied

“yes, and not only that it’s in a one to one relationship with another entity” I said.

By now, she seemed to think I was some art connoisseur and enquired “does it say anything else to you?”

I replied “well, it looks to me like it might be a subtype of some super entity”

By now, my colleagues (Nic & Inna) who also are fellow Information Management folks overheard what was going on and told me to stop winding up the curator.  Throughout the whole discussion she’d been taking notes in a little book on what I’d been saying to her on "my interpretation" of this masterpiece.

So you never know, maybe future visitors to the Modern & Contemporary Art Gallery will be told of an interesting interpretation by some crazy English guy of this picture.

Personally I don’t get art at all!

Confused by the name - surely not!

A Red Race Car



A Red Pick Up

I was pleased to read that common sense has prevailed and the Ford / Ferrari lawsuit has finally been amicably resolved.  However when it first came up I wondered just who on earth could possibly be confused about an F150.  I had visions of dissapointed customers lining up in Ford showrooms wanting to know why the engine didn't rev to 19,000 RPM.  I also had mental images of baseball hatted checkshirt buyers quizzing the Ferrari sales folks why there was only one seat and where you fit the gun rack.  Who could possibly be confused?  A pickup buyer maybe?