Microsoft Master Data Services - When to utilize?_问答_开发者

I'm wondering if anyone is currently utilizing Micros开发者_如何学JAVAoft's Master Data Services? How you are utilizing it? Whether you find it useful? When you believe it would be useful? Thanks!

I have been working with MDS since it was first released as part of a feature pack for SQL Server 2008 R2. While MDS has some compelling features - most notably detailed data lineage, I am not confident in recommending it to clients yet.

My reason for this hesitation is the nature of the install and the tendendency to fail on upgrade or system change. I struggled mightily with the both the SQL Server 2012 RC0 MDS and the RTM installs. There are simply too many brittle aspects of the install (such as the hard requirement that the service be installed on a domain-joined machine and the need to install the Silverlight 5.0 SDK for the client to work properly). I also experienced flakiness in the the Excel add-in.

I see where Microsoft is going and I think the product will eventually be useful. Considering it's purpose (master data repository), MDS must be more 'rock solid' before I would use it in production.

We aren't using it currently in our office, however the presentation Microsoft did in town a while back seemed very interesting. I saw it as sort of a competitor to Oracle's OBAW warehouse. You've probably already looked at these, but Microsoft has a decent set of webcasts that cover how to install and use MDS out here:
http://www.msdev.com/Directory/SeriesDescription.aspx?CourseId=155

I'm anxious to see if anyone else is using it as well, we tend to have a hard time talking our management into letting us try these types of services without being able to point to other corporations that have successfully implemented said product.

We're just starting to investigate the use of MDS to support our consulting practice, specifically around data analytics and ETLs to deduplicate, standardize, and sanitize client data. It's probably just scratching the surface of MDS, but we were led to MDS initially for its inclusion of regular expression capabilities in SQL to transform free-form text data.

Before MDS/DQS, part of the sustainability / enduring-success of a custom database application was heavily dependent on one or both of the following items...

Having a full-time technical resource to manually update the master data. Someone who can work with the Business Experts and make the necessary adjustments to the data in the database.
Developing (in addition to the database/application/etc) a custom UI that is intuitive enough for the less-technical Business Experts to use for managing the master data themselves.

Neither of these were ideal from a cost-perspective. With MDS/DQS, a developer/contractor can come in, design an end-to-end Data Warehouse/BI solution including full integration with DQS/MDS (probably via SSIS packages) with relative ease. The Business-Experts can be trained to manage the master data using a UI they are already very familiar with (ex. Excel), and the developer/contractor can move on to the next project/client.

Also, if the business already has other data sources (via acquisitions or silo'd-yet-overlapping efforts or whatever), MDS can be used to manage all the master data in one centralized location.

It might not be the best MDS product available yet however it does come with SQL Server. Compared to most of the bespoke efforts for accommodating meta-data or master data in warehouse loads it's a pretty good option since most of the time is spent concentrating on the warehouse and the mastering of ancillary or other data isn't normally well accommodated for leaving questionable results. I prefer to use it than create some other flaky option that the customers will find it difficult to maintain. If you have budget however I would consider looking around for something more polished.

Like anything though give master data the respect it deserves. If it is going to be used then it's worth spending the time to model the entities, flow of data and usage correctly. The data stewards will need to savvy and will require training (it's not the most usable interface in the world - to say the least).

As we are a small consulting and development company we don't use MDS internally but we do implement it at customers with a focus on managing the Golden Record as the customers have a myriad of databases and applications all using the same data (customer, product …)

I agree with Lynn Langit's comment about installation and SilverLight dependency and the general comments about the UI. There are also a lot of smaller companies that don't run SQL Enterprise Edition but whom could benefit from MDS.

Those are the reasons why we are now developing a modern web application which we will host for our customers (probably on Azure). If you're thinking about MDS I'd recommend to have a look at the API to replace (parts) of the UI.

Master Data Service is very useful for managing Master Data, We have used Master Data Services 2012 and 2016, there are not too many features present in 2012 ,2016 is much better than 2012 with some new features , but I think still Microsoft needs to improve Master Data Services, they should include some flexibility in business rule's area.