It is not unusual\u00c2\u00a0for\u00c2\u00a0people to use \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcReference Data\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and ‘Master Data’ interchangeably without understanding the differences.
\nLets try to understand the differences with an example of sales transaction.<\/p>\n
A sales transaction contains information like\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.
\nStore,
\nProducts Sold,
\nSales Person,
\nStore Name,
\nSales Date,
\nCustomer,
\nPrice,
\nQuantity,
\netc.<\/p>\n
Attributes from the above example can be separated into two types: Factual <\/strong>(transactional) and Dimensional<\/strong> information We can see that the dimensional data is already embedded in the transaction. And with dimensional attributes we can successfully complete the transaction.Dimensional data that directly participates in a transaction is master data. <\/strong><\/p>\n But is the list of dimensional attributes in the transaction\u00c2\u00a0complete?\u00c2\u00a0 The above questions cannot be answered by attributes in the transaction. These dimensional data is missing in the transactions.\u00c2\u00a0 This missing dimensional data that does not directly participate in transaction but are attributes of\u00c2\u00a0the dimension is reference data. \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is not unusual\u00c2\u00a0for\u00c2\u00a0people to use \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcReference Data\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and ‘Master Data’ interchangeably without understanding the differences. Lets try to understand the differences with an example of sales transaction. A sales transaction contains information like\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. Store, Products Sold, Sales Person, Store Name, Sales Date, Customer, Price, Quantity, etc. Attributes from the above example can be separated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,7,30,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-data-architecture","category-etl-basics","category-etl-book","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/etlguru.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/etlguru.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/etlguru.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etlguru.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etlguru.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/etlguru.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/etlguru.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etlguru.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etlguru.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nPrice and Quantity\u00c2\u00a0are measurable attributes of a transaction.
\nStore, Products Sold, Sales Person, Store Name, Sales Date, and Customer are dimensional attributes of a transaction.<\/p>\n
\n<\/u>
\nAsking few analytical questions can help us\u00c2\u00a0discover the answer.\u00c2\u00a0
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0-What is the Male to Female ratio of customers doing purchase at the store?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 -What type of products are customers buying? Ex: Electronic, Computers, Toys
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 -What type of Store is it?\u00c2\u00a0 Ex: Web store, Brick & Mortar, Telesales, Catalog Sales<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>
\nWhy it is important for an ETL person to understand the differences? Well once the\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcReference Data Management\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 (RDM) was popular then suddenly in last few years there is this new word \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMaster Data Management\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 (MDM). These words mean different things and they have significant implication on how they are managed. But that will be a topic of discussion for some future post!\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I hope this article will help\u00c2\u00a0clear atleast some confusion.<\/p>\n