In some organizations, the BI infrastructure architect may have responsibility over the nontechnical architectural components of the BI decision-support environment. In other organizations, he or she works closely with the data administrator, meta data administrator, and data quality analyst. Occasionally the BI infrastructure architect oversees the activities of the data administrator, meta data administrator, and data quality analyst. It is up to the organization to select the enterprise architecture reporting structure that is most appropriate for its organizational culture.
Data administrator
In many organizations, data administration has the responsibility for most of the nontechnical infrastructure components, in particular logical data modeling, data quality, naming standards, and meta data. However, since the area of nontechnical infrastructure involves so many disciplines, the traditional data administration responsibilities should be divided among the data administrator, the meta data administrator, the data quality analyst, and sometimes even the BI infrastructure architect. All of these roles are usually staffed by members of the enterprise architecture group .
Data quality analyst
The data quality analyst takes charge of finding and analyzing dirty data in the source files. Since it is impossible to cleanse all the dirty data, the organization must establish triaging procedures and prioritization guidelines. The data quality analyst is the steward of those data quality standards.
Meta data administrator
The meta data administrator is responsible for the meta data repository. He or she must create it (or buy and install it), maintain it, and populate it. During the BI project, the data administrator will provide the business meta data, and the database administrator and data quality analyst (with the help of the ETL and application lead developers) will provide the technical meta data. The meta data administrator must then merge all the meta data into the meta data repository and make it available to IT staff and to the business people. The meta data administrator should therefore establish the standards related to the meta data repository activities.
