Chapter 18. Maintaining Data

• The Importance of Data Maintenance

• The Data Maintenance Policy

• Handling New Data Sources

• Handling Exceptions

• Checking Data Quality

• Maintaining Data Checklist

• Further Reading

• Looking Ahead

Data maintenance refers to the policies and procedures used to keep the data in your directory up-to-date and accurate. Data maintenance is one of the most important tasks of maintaining your directory service. Your directory service is all about providing access to data; if that data is inaccurate or of poor quality, the quality of your entire service is reduced, users are disappointed, and directory-enabled applications may function incorrectly or not at all.

You will also find that without proper planning, data maintenance can become one of the most expensive tasks involved in maintaining your directory service. Failure to implement automated data maintenance procedures can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff time spent updating data and resolving problems. The loss of productivity and user satisfaction caused by inaccurate data in the directory is often expensive.

This chapter describes the process of maintaining your data. We begin with a section explaining in more detail why data maintenance is so important. Then we describe how to formulate your data maintenance policy. Afterward, we discuss how to manage data maintained both centrally and by your users. Next we explain how to check the quality of your data. Finally, we explore what happens when you need to extend your directory with data from a new source.