Different types of Data play different roles within an organization. They also have different management requirements. Malcolm Chisholm has proposed a six-layer Taxonomy of Data that includes Metadata, Reference Data, Enterprise Structure Data, Transaction Structure Data, Transaction Activity Data, and Transaction Audit Data. Within this Taxonomy, he defines Master Data as an Aggregation of Reference Data, Enterprise Structure Data, and Transaction Structure Data.
- Reference Data, for example, code and description tables, is data that is used solely to characterize other data in an organization, or solely to relate data in a database to information beyond the boundaries of the organization.
- Enterprise Structure Data, for example, a chart of accounts, enables reporting of business activity by business responsibility.
- Transaction Structure Data, for example customer identifiers, describes the things must be present for a transaction to occur: products, customers, vendors.
Master Data is, the data that provides the Context for Business Activity Data in the form of common and abstract concepts that relate to the activity.
Master Data Objects are core business objects used in different applications across an organization, along with their associated Metadata, attributes, definitions, roles, connections, and taxonomies. Master Data Objects represent those ‘things’ that matter most to an organization – those that are logged in transactions, reported on, measured, analyzed. It includes the details (definitions and identifiers) of internal and external objects involved in business transactions, such as customers, products, employees, vendors, and controlled domains (code values).
