Integrated data allows for easier compliance with regulations GDPR. It also facilitates the use of business intelligence and data visualization tools. Relevant datasets can be easily located and utilized. Data discrepancies can be easier to fix. Breaking down data silo walls with open source software is the key to releasing these capabilities.
Ian Barker outlines the benefits of freely shared data in this article from BetaNews:
Organizations need help to understand, manage, rationalize and evolve their systems and data. This needs an integrated and flexible knowledge base describing the systems, how they are linked together and the data that flows between them. This knowledge base must be self-managing and available to a wide range of tools and technologies.
Regulations are emerging within and across industries to ensure consistency and quality of data used within enterprises. Metadata is at the heart of these regulations. It encompasses database schemas, formats, semantic information, business rules, ownership, lineage, movement, and usage. Having a sound metadata strategy across an institution is key to improving the flow of data — ensuring as much of the data as possible in the data silos is well described within the tools that manage the data, using shared glossaries and agreed vocabularies. Metadata that describes the format and content of data allows developers to determine which dataset to use in a new project. Metadata enables data to be used outside the applications and organizations that created it. As a bonus, metadata that describes the business context for data enables automated governance processes to apply, making it easier to demonstrate compliance with initiatives such as GDPR.
Products from a variety of vendors support metadata, however, they do not interoperate easily today. ODPI Egeria helps by defining a way to share metadata across diverse and heterogeneous tools.
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Egeria is helping enterprises close the data silo gap by making it possible for diverse tools used in multiple silos to interoperate and share their metadata. Organized metadata sharing through Egeria simplifies the access and integration of data in different silos. It also enables unified data governance, and eases the application & demonstration of compliance with data regulations.
