I had a very interesting, if somewhat absurd, conversation at a BI road show recently where the entire process of spewing information out of a database was likened to the human body processing food and drink.
Stick with me here…..the database is the “engine” of the system. The engine is protected by all sorts of cleaning and scrubbing processes to ensure that toxic data is either completely or partially eliminated before passing through, where, once it reaches the engine it is available to be accessed to drive performance of the organisation – and the cleaner the input, the cleaner the output, the better the performance of the owner.
In the same way as the stomach is protected by an array of internal organs, so the database is protected by all sorts of internal processes – it then rests with the user to identify needs and draw on the appropriate level of detail as and when required. All a bit vague I know, but think the analogy through yourself and I bet you’ll ultimately get to the same conclusion which I suppose is what we all know anyway – The more junk you load into the engine the less power will be available for the user.
