Meta Data Repository Challenges

Good ideas are often hard to implement. Providing a meta data repository is a good idea but also quite a challenging one, regardless of whether the decision is made to license (buy) a commercially available product or to build a repository from scratch. This section briefly describes the challenges faced when implementing a meta data repository (Figure 7.5).

Figure 7.5. Meta Data Repository Challenges

Technical Challenges

Building a meta data repository is not a trivial task. It is a project in itself, with its own project plan, its own development steps, and its own staff. All the technology challenges that apply to databases and applications can surface on meta data repository projects.

Licensing a meta data repository product is an alternative to building one, but the "plain vanilla " versions of commercially available meta data repository products often do not meet all the meta data requirements of a BI decision-support environment. Therefore, licensing a meta data repository product still necessitates extensive analysis of the requirements in order to select the right product, as well as a considerable implementation effort to enhance it.

Enhancing licensed software comes with its own challenges. The source code for the product may not be available. The vendor may insist on incorporating the requested enhancements for a price and at his or her own speed. The time and effort required for product maintenance increase because the enhancements must be reapplied to the new releases and versions of the licensed meta data repository product.

Staffing Challenges

Meta data should be "living" documentation stored in a database, that is, in the meta data repository. Storing meta data as paper documents is guaranteed to turn it into "shelfware" within months, if not weeks. This means that, at a minimum, one meta data administrator must be dedicated full-time to managing the meta data repository content and the software. If a meta data repository is being built as part of the BI project, a staff of one person will not be enough. The meta data repository effort will require an analyst, a data modeler, a database designer, and one or more developers.

Budget Challenges

Although many BI experts think of meta data as the "glue" of the BI decision-support environment, most organizations allocate little or no money for creating and maintaining a meta data repository. They still regard meta data as systems documentation for technicians, rather than a navigation tool for business people. The pain of access frustration and data confusion must often reach an intolerable level before organizations include meta data as a mandatory and standard deliverable of their BI projects.

Lack of meta data has frequently been cited as one of the reasons for BI application failure.

Usability Challenges

Using a meta data repository should be completely intuitive. Business people should be able to click on an icon and immediately get the requested information about a table or column, a chart or report, or even a business query. More complex inquiries against the meta data repository should be handled with built-in or customized macros. However, the most polished way to present meta data is to include it in BI queries, as shown in Figure 7.6.

Figure 7.6. Example of Meta Data in a BI Query

Unfortunately, many meta data repository products are still designed by technicians for technicians rather than for business people. Some of these products still have a cryptic meta data language, lack sophisticated reporting capabilities, are not context sensitive, and require an understanding of the meta model that describes the meta data objects and their relationships.

Political Challenges

Building an enterprise-wide meta data solution is difficult because departmental differences must be reconciled and cross-departmental politics must be resolved. These disputes, although totally predictable, are rarely taken into account when the project plan is created. As a result, projects are delayed while these issues are addressed or pushed up to business executives and steering committees . This gives the impression that BI projects are difficult, controversial , tiresome, draining, slow, and generally undesirable work.

Despite all these challenges, a meta data repository is a mandatory component of every BI decision-support environment.