Organizations increasingly use data to gain a competitive edge. Two key disciplines have emerged at the forefront of this approach: data science and data analytics. While both fields help you extract insights from data, data analytics focuses more on analyzing historical data to guide decisions in the present. In contrast, data science enables you to create data-driven algorithms to forecast future outcomes. These disciplines differ significantly in their methodologies, tools, and outcomes.

Digitalization has led to more data collection, integral to many industries from healthcare diagnoses to financial transactions. For instance, hospitals use data governance practices to break siloed data and decrease the risk of misdiagnosis or treatment delays. Therefore, managing data to protect its integrity and security leads to high-quality, reliable data that empowers organizations to make informed decisions.

Data analytics is the science of analyzing raw data to draw conclusions about it. The process involves examining extensive data sets to uncover hidden patterns, correlations, and other insights. With today’s technology, data analytics can go beyond traditional analysis, incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms that help process information faster than manual methods.

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) is a computing technology through which users can extract and query data to analyze it from different points of view. These typically high-speed and complex queries are performed on massive data volumes stored in a data lake, data warehouse, or other large-scale repositories. Typical OLAP applications include business intelligence (BI) and forecasting and reporting.

Data governance covers processes, roles, policies, standards, and metrics that help an organization achieve its goals by ensuring the effective and efficient use of information. It sets up the processes and responsibilities necessary to maintain the data’s quality and security across the business. Data governance manages the formal data assets of an organization.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a popular communication method that enterprises use to exchange information accurately and quickly with trading partners. EDI transmits data almost instantaneously — serving as a fast and efficient mode for exchanging business documents. ANSI X12 vs. EDIFACT are the two most common EDI standards used for EDI, but they have different structures, styles, and usage.

A database schema, or DB schema, is an abstract design representing how your data is stored in a database. Database schemas can be visually represented using schema diagrams, such as the one below: A database schema diagram visually describes the following: Database schemas are at the heart of every scalable, high-performance database. They’re the blueprint that defines how a database stores and organizes data, its components’ relationships, and its response to queries.

Two related concepts often come up when data teams work on data governance: data provenance and data lineage. While they may seem similar at first glance, there are fundamental differences between the two concepts. Data provenance covers the origin and history of data, including its creation and modifications. On the other hand, data lineage tracks the data’s journey through various systems and processes, highlighting its flow and transformation across different data pipeline stages.

Data observability is a process that actively monitors an organization’s data for accuracy, health, and usefulness. It is the ability of an organization to have comprehensive visibility over its entire data landscape, including data pipelines, infrastructure, and applications. Data observability allows the organization to quickly identify, control, prevent, remediate, and fix data outages, all within agreed service level agreements (SLAs).

Data provenance is a method of creating a documented trail that accounts for data’s origin, creation, movement, and dissemination. It involves storing the ownership and process history of data objects to answer questions like, “When was data created?”, “Who created the data?” and “Why was it created? Data Provenance is vital in establishing data lineage, which is essential for validating, debugging, auditing, and evaluating data quality and determining data reliability.

Metadata refers to the information about data that gives it more context and relevance. It records essential aspects of the data (e.g., date, size, ownership, data type, or other data sources) to help users discover, identify, understand, organize, retrieve, and use it—transforming information into business-critical assets. Think of it as labels on a box that describe what’s inside. Metadata makes it easier to find and utilize the data that you need. Typical metadata elements include.

Before shedding light on metadata management, it is crucial to understand what metadata is. Metadata refers to the information about your data. This data includes elements representing its context, content, and characteristics. It helps you discover, access, use, store, and retrieve your data, having a wide spread of variations. Metadata of an image. Image by Astera. Let’s look at some of the metadata types below.

Data aggregation is the process of combining and summarizing data from disparate sources into a cohesive dataset. It prepares data for analysis, making it easier to obtain insights into patterns and insights that aren’t observable in isolated data points. Once aggregated, data is generally stored in a data warehouse. Then, you can leverage it to gain a holistic perspective on your operations and market trends, design effective risk management practices, and make more informed decisions overall.

A solid understanding of internal technical and business terms is essential to manage and use data. Business glossaries are pivotal in this aspect, facilitating improved understanding and collaboration among teams. A business glossary breaks down complex terms into easy-to-understand definitions, ensuring that everyone in the organization, from the newest recruit to the CEO, is on the same page regarding business language.

OLTP is a transaction-centric data processing that follows a three-tier architecture. Every day, businesses worldwide perform millions of financial transactions. This fact brings to mind client-facing personnel such as bank tellers and supermarket cashiers tapping away on keyboards and at cash registers, and with good reason. According to ACI Worldwide, a payment systems company, there was a 42.2% growth in global real-time transaction volumes in 2023, amounting to 266.2 billion transactions.

Data mining, also known as Knowledge Discovery in Data (KDD), is a powerful technique that analyzes and unlocks hidden insights from vast amounts of information and datasets. Data mining goes beyond simple analysis—leveraging extensive data processing and complex mathematical algorithms to detect underlying trends or calculate the probability of future events.

Data filtering plays an instrumental role in reducing computational time and enhancing the accuracy of AI models. Given the increasing need for organizations to manage large volumes of data, leveraging data filtering has become indispensable.

The success of data warehouse solutions depends on how well organizations implement test cases to guarantee data integrity. As organizations evolve, data warehouse testing becomes crucial to adhere to industry best practices.

According to Gartner, 80% of companies worldwide are expected to have efficient data management systems in place by 2025. This projection highlights the growing recognition of data governance tools as essential enablers for maintaining and enhancing the quality and security of organizational data within these data management systems. In this blog, we will talk about some of the best data governance tools and software to consider in 2024.