10.3. Identifying Information

As we discussed in Chapter 8, every record that will be incorporated into a master repository or registry must be uniquely identifiable. Within every master data model, some set of data attribute values can be combined to provide a candidate key that is used to distinguish each record from every other. We have referred to these underlying data attributes as the “identifying attributes,” and the specific values are “identifying information.” Chapter 8 provided a method for determining identifying attributes, and at the point of developing the integration framework, we employ those identifying attributes and their values to develop the master registry.

10.3.1. Indexing Identifying Values

No matter which architectural approach is taken for assembling the underlying MDM system, there must be an identification service that is queried whenever an application wants to access any master records. This service must ensure satisfaction of the uniqueness constraint that for every entity within the system there is one and only one entry, no entity is duplicated within the system, and that if the entity has not been registered within the system, the service will not locate an entry. The identification service is supported through the use of a registry of entities that is indexed using the values contained within the identifying attributes.