Ensure quality

With ER/Studio’s new model validation wizard, data architects can employ over 50 checks to ensure that models are completed using guidelines defined across the organisation and consistency is enforced at an enterprise level for both logical and physical models. Data modelers can look for common quality problems such as missing object definitions, unused domains, identical unique indexes and circular relationships.

Comprehensive forward-engineering functionality simplifies building new databases or changing an existing database. Features such as auto-documentation, validation wizards and capacity planning ensure quality database designs.

Best practice for process programming: a robust change management process must be in place to ensure that data is consistently managed throughout its lifecycle.

Assess impact of change

A robust change management process must be in place to ensure that data is consistently managed throughout its lifecycle. Using the ER/Studio Repository, users can implement sophisticated branching and merging algorithms to managing the versioning and lifecycle of their data models.

Before any change is made, however, it is important to assess the impact that change will have in other areas of the organisation. A “Where Used” report can easily be generated for a given model object as part of its basic property editor (shown below). Using this report, users can see what other logical and physical models may be using the object scheduled for modification.

Successful communication between project stakeholders is a key success factor of any project, particularly a data governance initiative where agreement needs to be reached between diverse groups for data definitions, business rules, etc. Data provides the underpinnings of the financial and strategic information that drives an organisation. Without correct business understanding and definition of this data, decision-making and financial reporting can be negatively affected.

As new projects are undertaken, ensuring that business requirements are adequately addressed and accurately implemented can be a challenge. It can be difficult for business users to communicate their needs to database developers, or projects can be developed for a short-term objective in a way that leaves the system inflexible and unable to handle future growth. A first step to mutual understanding is the ability to, “speak the other’s language”. For example, business analysts may be responsible for attribute definitions, but entering these definitions into an Entity-Relationship diagram would be overwhelming to most business users. ER/Studio provides one way of crossing this cultural divide with customisable macros to generate Excel spreadsheets of business-related information that can shared with business users, then re-imported and merged into the ER Model.

HTML Reports can also be generated to allow users to visualise models over the web, as well as provide basic impact analysis reports, data definitions, etc. A key feature is the highly navigable visual diagrams that facilitate collaboration among the business analysts, data architects and database developers. Users can “drill-down” from these diagrams to see detailed impact analysis and metadata reports.

Reporting is one effective way of sharing information, but many project stakeholders require their information in a native, reusable format. For existence, data model information can be exported to a Business Intelligence (BI) report, an ETL tool, another data modeling tool, or in XML format.

ER/Studio’s MetaWizard allows users to Import and Export information to/from a wide variety of formats to promote both asset reuse and communication between parties.