How reliable is your data source?

reedme — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:13:29 GMT

It seems like aeons ago (not even a decade yet) when I was @ a little start-up that was assimilating real estate data to further our digital business model and making sales to web-savvy home buyers at a discount. So many funny stories, so little time...

The data from every MLS system we assimilated had its own little quirks. It seems that REALTOR®s aren’t the best data entry clerks (who would’ve imagined that there are 71 different ways to spell Chicago?), but maybe it’s not just REALTOR®s. It could be that humans aren’t very good at reliable data entry.

New York City takes this to a whole new level of insanity, though. Allowing for a trivial paper crime to “steal” an entire skyscraper??

The massive ripoff [the theft of the Empire State Building] illustrates a gaping loophole in the city's system for recording deeds, mortgages and other transactions. It took 90 minutes for Daily News to 'steal' the Empire State Building (nydailynews.com)

Since everybody’s hyper-aware these days of the fragility of our mortgage system, how is it that the largest city in the county allows this to continue in the 21st century?

If you’re doing business based on somebody else’s data... how certain are you that you’re making the right decisions? I’m not going to call “business intelligence” an oxymoron like many people do “military intelligence”, but they do sound the same... don’t they? What risk mitigation are you doing to prevent executive decisions from being made @ your compnay based on the equivalent of a Ouija board (data from somebody else’s system)?

Maybe Skynet has a point about humans...? Er, wait a sec-!

Who are you and what do you want with my data?

reedme — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:04:51 GMT

If you’ve got data, there are probably people who want to use it, analyze it, do things with it... that you never imagined and possibly don’t want them to. “Those people” might even be government agents. Who can put you in jail. If you’re not careful with your data.

Do you have a plan for data governance and regulatory compliance?

We’d like to help.

Brent says: As somebody who’s gone through the whitepaper start to finish (with a lot of guidance from JC’s team) I can tell you that this is really good stuff. If you work for a public company subject to regulations, if you work with sensitive financial data, or if you work with health care data, you need to read this doc. New SQL Server 2008 Compliance Guide

Are you the Gate Keeper? Are you the Key Master? Or is there only Zhoul?

p.s. SCAN and SQL PASS have been a great week so far. It’s good to meet a lot of you in person. Come by the product pavilion and the Ask-the-Experts table and say howdy. I’ll be one of the 300 people wearing a brown shirt. Heh.

Reed Me : compliance

How reliable is your data source?

Who are you and what do you want with my data?