Data’s dirty words: extract, cleanse, verify and manage
You know it’s a funny thing, as close as programmers and DBAs (database administrators) often sit, we rarely hear of either party delighting in the functionality of new data migration tools and telling us how they make their lives easier. Why then do terms like data extraction, cleansing, verification and management seem to be tarnished into the management-speak bin of data-centric publicity?
Perhaps this subject is just so ‘back-office’ that it doesn’t warrant headline news enough of the time. After all, there are huge amounts of expenditure laid out on enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions that look after data management tasks.
Programmers build these systems and then develop tools to extract commercially motivated functions from the nicely verified and collated data, perhaps for a CRM (customer relationship management) system for example. But in terms of headline news you’re more likely to be reading about the latest handset device than the latest big wins in data extraction aren’t you?
Perhaps it’s because I chose CES week to talk about this subject that I am in a minority of one. Who knows?
Well, leaving Google Nexus to one side for a moment, let’s talk about Epicor instead. This company is has just sold its wares to John Hogg (a fuels and lubricants outfit) to upgrade its DOS-based custom ERP system and reduce the number of integrated systems, merging its financial, inventory, CRM and production functionality to a single focal point.
This means (so says our mini case study cum press statement) that John Hogg can now, “Extract, cleanse, verify and import its master data sets, saving a huge amount of time and moving from a labour intensive text-based process to a simple automated “drag and drop” experience.”
See that wasn’t so painful after all was it? I think there’s probably plenty of interesting work going on at the data management level that affects the lives of technology professionals everywhere. It’s just a shame that not everybody gets a party in Las Vegas to celebrate it.