The business representative assigned to the BI project is a major contributor during the top-down logical data modeling activities as well as the bottom-up source data analysis activities. He or she provides the business meta data to the data administrator and assists the data quality analyst in analyzing the source files.
Data administrator
The data administrator is trained in logical data modeling, business meta data, normalization techniques, business data domain rules, business data integrity rules, and standardization methods . The job description of a data administrator matches the activities of the Data Analysis step. The data administrator will be the lead person during this step and will facilitate all of the data modeling sessions. He or she also has the responsibility of documenting the logical data model and the supporting business meta data in the CASE tool.
Data quality analyst
The data quality analyst is a systems analyst, trained in using the technical data conversion rules, in reading as well as writing programs, and in extracting data from all types of source files and source databases. Finding the data violations in the source files and source databases is the prime responsibility of the data quality analyst. He or she works closely with the data administrator to model data anomalies and to correct the data violations with help from the business representative and the data owners .
ETL lead developer
The ETL lead developer must be involved in the modeling reviews and must be aware of the magnitude of data quality problems found in the source files and source databases. He or she needs to understand the complexity of cleansing the data because the cleansing algorithms must be incorporated into the ETL process. In some cases, the ETL tool will not be able to support some cleansing algorithms, and custom code may have to be written.
Meta data administrator
As the custodian of meta data and the administrator of the meta data repository, the meta data administrator needs to know what business meta data components are being collected and how. Some meta data components may be entered into a CASE tool, while other components may be captured in word processing documents or in spreadsheets. The meta data administrator will have to extract the meta data components from the various files and tools and merge them into the meta data repository.
Stakeholders (including data owners)
The business people using the BI applications are usually downstream information consumers and not the data owners. During this step, both information consumers and data owners have the responsibility to standardize the business data and to set rules and policies for the data. Continuing disagreements over data between data owners and information consumers must be pushed up to business executives for resolution.
Subject matter expert
The subject matter expert assists the data administrator and data quality analyst by interpreting the business data, explaining the business rules and policies for the data, and determining the domain (valid values) of the data. In addition, the subject matter expert is responsible for finding data problems in the source data files and source databases and for suggesting how to correct them.
