IBM used to have some great in-depth information on their web site(s). Years ago, they did presentations at user groups. don’t know if they had formal classes. My memory says there may have been a Red Book on MDM.

Master Data Management is a good idea. We all have known about it for years and years. But only in the past decade or so has it had a name; MDM.

Yup, it can be hard to implement – especially in an already existing application or system.

Imagine that any one piece of data exists in only ONE place. No more having to update a mailing address in multiple places…
> customer master file
> quarterly catalog mailing file
> billing dept file
> customer contact file
> repair dept
> and don’t forget the secretary’s own personal copy
… instead, the mailing address exists in ONE spot (and no you can’t have your own copy).

In a very real sense, MDM is a cousin to proper relational design. But MDM does not require an RDBMS. MDM can be applied to any file structure; VSAM, flat files, whatever. The goal is to remove redundant data.

Of course, all of this goes right out the window as soon as you start building data marts and warehouses.