Alexis
Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Talk Tech with Data Dave. I am Alexis, your host of this podcast, along with my dear friend, Data Dave, to answer your questions about all things cloud, all things data, all things technology, all things AI, and all things d three clarity. Good morning, Dave.
Data Dave
Good morning, Alexis. How are you this morning?
Alexis
I’m good. I am excited for our question today, and I’m excited to remind our listeners that if you have a question for Data Dave, please reach out to us by emailing us at talktech@d3clarity.com or you can submit a question right on the D3Clarity website. Either one is fine with us, but we do have some stuff to talk about today.
Data Dave
Excellent. I’m looking forward to it.
Alexis
There is this acronym that we use a lot here at D3C;arity that has been kind of the most confusing thing that I have dealt with my entire time here. That acronym is MDM.
Data Dave
Okay.
Alexis
Now, you know why it’s MDM, right? Because MDM, I know, stands for three different things- at least. I know it’s master data management, which we have talked about before. And it’s definitely a D3Clarity specialty. There’s metadata management, which… that’s a whole thing in and of itself. And then there’s mobile device management, which I actually use as well, because we do MDM with our computers quite a bit.
So, I never know what MDM we’re talking about. Clearly, I don’t know. Can you help me understand the difference between the three? And then maybe answer the question why? Like why did we decide to use the same acronym for all of these things?
Data Dave
Let’s see if we can have a go at MDM and the acronym MDM, one of these is not like the others.
Mobile device management. We’ll leave the other two. Mobile device management is different to the other two. Mobile device management is literally what it says. It’s the management of mobile devices. So, when you bring your own mobile device to your company, the company wants to place security policies, security wrapped around that and other things. Take that device and manage it, whether it’s issued by the company or brought by yourself, the company wants to take control of the data on that and take control of that device to put policies on it. Like if you try and log into it too many times, it wipes all the data off of it and things like that to make sure that if it’s stolen or other things. And the same is true with the laptop.
So mobile device management is an IT systems, an IT driven acronym for mobile device management, MDM, very different from the other two, which are master data management and metadata management. That covers that one. Why do they use the same one? I don’t know. I’ve been confused by that one a couple of times when people have used it. Basically, it comes from two different, really two totally different groups of people, both using a very simple acronym of the first letter of three words.
Alexis
Yeah. And I guess I understand that from, like, a different person concept. You as a data person is obviously going to be using MDM to mean probably master data management, at the very least metadata management. But like, my M365 guy who helps me manage all the computers, like, he and I use the word MDM and we’re talking about Microsoft Intune, which is what we use to manage our PCs. So…
Data Dave
And it’s all about that context. Right. All about that context of what you’re using and how you’re using that context. Names of everything are ambiguous. They’re only defined, if you like, within their namespace, within their frame of reference.
A dog’s name, Rocky, it means something when I’m at home. It means my neighbor’s dog. When I’m with my daughter, it means the mountains down the road.
Alexis
That’s a good point.
That’s a really good analogy. So, yes. All right, mobile device management, the way for us to manage devices be that usually for security purposes, at least that’s why we use MDM.
Data Dave
Exactly. And just being cognizant of the three contexts that they’re used in now, the other two are a little closer together. Right? When you talk about metadata management and master data management, often those are both used within the context of data or information governance or information management area.
Let’s do master data management first. Master data management is the management, obviously, the management of master data, where master data is the data. The things, the entities, if you like, that, describe the crucial data that you do business with. So, customers, products, vendors, locations, different things are all what we consider domains in master data. And that’s the master data that you’d use to describe your business, the data that has to be correct. If you’re going to sell something, you have to know which product you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. So, the who and the what become master data. So, every company’s got a customer list and probably a product catalog. Both of those would be considered master data. So, then the process of managing that master data is master data management where you’re ensuring that you’re always using the same list of customers, you’re always using the same product catalog. There is a structured process for bringing out a new product into that product catalog, and that falls under the banner of master data management.
Alexis
That’s the master data management. The big picture, the main items, right?
Data Dave
The picture of the main items. Metadata management. Metadata is one of these confusing terms. Sometimes, it takes people…
Alexis
It’s not about Facebook, right?
Data Dave
No, it’s not about “Meta’s data”.
It is about the data. It’s the data about data. The data that describes the data.
So, it’s meta to the data. So, the name of a file is metadata for that file, which folder that file is in what server that file is on is metadata. It is describing the file. It isn’t necessarily the file itself. It is describing the file.
So, if you’ve got a spreadsheet that’s called “Alexis XLS”, the name of that file is “Alexis XLS”. That is metadata because it’s data that describes data that describes data.
Now the reason we manage that , it’s called metadata management. If I build a data catalog that says I’ve got a thousand products and each one of them has a specification sheet, so I’ve got a document that describes every single product.
Well now I’ve got to manage not only the data, but I’ve also got to manage the metadata around that. I’ve got to know that all my file names are probably consistent. All my file name files are in the right place. I’ve got a catalog that says if you want to find the spec sheet for this product, this is where you look for it. That is now metadata that describes how to find and how to locate that specification. So, I’ve got to manage that. Especially when I get into a large organization where we’re not just sending these things around in email, we’re putting them in a central store. We’re putting them in three central stores. We’ve got different purposes for them. One’s in development, one’s in production, one’s in whatever. This is the metadata that describes the data. So, if you using a database then a table name or a schema name or a server name is metadata.
So, it’s all the data that describes the data.
Alexis
Before we move on, is metadata only the description of master data or is metadata the description of all data?
Data Dave
Metadata can be the description of any data. So, metadata, so file name. I just use those examples, any file name, any table name, any column name, any access parameter is probably metadata to a certain sense.
Alexis
So, I’m Alexis, which would be the data, but my first name is Alexis. So, first name would be the metadata of the first name is Alexis.
Data Dave
Right. I know to look in the first name field, the metadata first name or the word first name is metadata.
Then that contains your first name, which now gives you you. So, your address is identity data. The fact that it’s an address is metadata. So, we enter all addresses in the same way. So when we’re talking about metadata management, we’re talking about, if we’re talking about address management, we’re actually talking about metadata management. We’re putting all the addresses in the same structure.
Alexis
That makes sense. You had mentioned catalogs when we were talking about master data. But do people usually use catalogs to help manage their metadata and their master data? Or do people use, like, what are, what are the best tools for using?
Data Dave
So, yes, so we often talk about data catalogs in context of metadata.
A data catalog is a catalog similar to any other catalog that contains data, doesn’t contain objects. If you go to Amazon, they’ve got a massive catalog of objects, lots of them, thousands of them.
If we were to build a similar thing but contained all the data. So you wanted to know where all the data in your company was. So, all the data in D3Clarity is stored in a taxonomy, and it is known and understood, then that becomes what we call a data catalog. And that is often the data catalog is the management of metadata.
Alexis
Taxonomy?
Data Dave
That’s probably a conversation for another day. But taxonomy is, taxonomy is a new word. A taxonomy is a classification. So, a hierarchy of product categories or whatever. When you navigate your Amazon catalog, and you go through men’s clothing, shirts, pants, whatever. Yeah, like my filters. That’s a taxonomy of categories that you’re working through.
Alexis
Got it. Okay.
Data Dave
That’s probably another conversation that we need to have.
Alexis
That was just a big word there. And I was like, man, you gotta stop that, Dave. I need to understand what we’re talking about.
So, the classifications of them, they go through a classification system within the catalog. Okay. Mdm, master data management and MDM metadata management are somewhat similar. They’re just different types of data that we’re talking about.
Data Dave Yes.
Alexis
And why we decided to use the same acronym is beyond me.
Data Dave
Yeah, I try not to use MDM for metadata management, I’ll be honest with you, because they are very closely related disciplines, especially when you up level it to information management or data governance. Both MDM, master data and metadata, are components that have to be paid attention to within the data governance realm, so therefore they become very close. So, I’m more likely to speak about metadata and master data and, to some extent, try not to use the acronym in either place because to a certain extent, I don’t think anybody really wants to do the management.
People tend to want good quality, high clean master data, but actually, spending the time to clean it and manage it is something I don’t want to do. So, I don’t really want to talk about that. It’s the same as I want a clean, polished, and nice kitchen, but I don’t want to spend my time cleaning it. And cleaning it as you go can be far better than cleaning it up afterwards. And there’s all these other things that the process of management is not necessarily something that you necessarily want to focus on. You more want to focus on the master data itself or the metadata itself. I want to collect all my metadata in one place, same as I want to collect all my trash in one place. Right. I want to put it all in the same place, and I want to separate it between recyclable and nonrecyclable. So, I want to manage it and manage my trash and make sure it gets taken out on the right day. But really, I want to focus on the metadata itself, not on the process of managing it in the real world.
Alexis
It’s sometimes easier not to just keep using the acronym over and over again, but instead to be clear and to use your words wisely when you’re talking to people.
Data Dave
Yeah, yeah. So, I tend to talk about master data and metadata and separate them distinctly. So, it’s kind of, yes, you want master data, you want your master to be clean, you want it to be trusted, you want to be managed, you want it to be all these things. And there are tools that are master data management tools that you might use. You also might not. You might do master data management without the tools and without the acronym is loaded, being a market terminal. The same is true to a certain extent with metadata management. You can do the management without the tools, but you may want the tools. But now let’s talk about the metadata and what you’re trying to accomplish with your metadata.
Alexis
So we need to remember, when we hear the term MDM, one context like, who am I talking to? What are we focusing on? If we can figure that out, we can probably differentiate between master data and metadata management and mobile device management, and then to help us know the difference between master data and metadata. We’ve already kind of got the description of what the two mean, but also using the language specifically and wisely to help everyone understand the situation and not get too overwhelmed by it, if you will.
Data Dave
Right, exactly. And the problem we have with acronyms generally is their abbreviations. Right. So there’s nothing to stop the acronym from being ambiguous. We use acronyms all the time, and we use them within context of this organization, that organization, and others. When we’re often working with clients and doing data management, data governance, we have to drill through the acronyms that they use because they’ve got a set that are specific to their company. One comment I would have on acronyms as general is know the context that the acronym is being used.
Also, know what the acronym means in that context. So, we talk about master data management. Know that MDM in that context is master data management. Therefore, we’re talking about master data. It could also mean “My Dog Murray”, if I’m talking about a completely different context, and there’s no governing structure around that.
So, we need to think hard about the context that we’re working in and know what the acronym really means and then think about it that way. There’s nothing wrong with using acronyms, but my advice is to know what they mean and know the context that you’re talking in.
Alexis
Yeah, so I kind of had that acronym issue when I started at D3Clarity. “POC” in my former life always meant “Person of Contact”. Like, that was my point of contact for a situation. Who’s the POC for this? But when I came here, they were like, “Oh, you need a POC for that?” And I’m like, “I need to have a point of contact for that?” No, I need to have a “Proof of Concept” for that.
Data Dave
That’s right, exactly.
Alexis
In the situations, both those acronyms very much make sense, but I needed to understand what situation I was in.
Data Dave
And you need to understand the context that the acronym lies in. And that’s the danger of acronyms. People use them and throw them around a lot. And no disrespect to these individuals, but people do use them without knowing necessarily what they mean. And then you get into the confusion, and then you say, so what do you mean by that? There are a lot of things that are ambiguous in this life, and that’s definitely one of them. And it definitely helps to ask the question, and don’t be afraid to ask the question, because this is an ambiguous, to a certain extent, it’s an ambiguous world that we live in and an ambiguous language that we use.
Alexis
I mean, that’s why we did the “What does that mean?” episode where we just kind of went through all of those acronyms that we had already talked about. And truly, there are so many more out there listeners. If you have specific acronyms that you want us to talk more about, that you want us to give you some quick clarifications about, from a data or from a cloud perspective, we’d love to know what those acronyms are.
But yes, very much understanding the context. And I’ll say it. Obviously, I wasn’t afraid to ask what taxonomy meant, but I love just being like, “Hey, yo, stop. You need to tell me what that means.” I did it to Patrick Walsh all the time. Right? I still do it to Patrick Walsh all the time, whether or not we’re recording podcasts.
Data Dave
Because the cloud space and the security space where he lives and breathes is full of different acronyms and different structures. And people use them because they’re so familiar with them. But sometimes you do have to just stop them and say, okay, let’s have this conversation.
Alexis
Yeah. Well, that was awesome, Dave, thank you for explaining, like, those three separate items to me and just having that kind of bigger conversation about acronyms in general. I think that was a wonderful episode.
Listeners out there, I’ll say it one more time. Please send us your questions. You can email us at talktech@d3clarity.com or you can submit a question right on the D3Clarity website. And if you’d be interested in joining us for one of these episodes as an expert or maybe in a Data Dave Dives Deeper, you can also reach out to us at that talktech@d3clarity email. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
Data Dave Excellent. Thank you very much, Alexis, always a pleasure.
