One Golden Record—Governed, Shareable, and Auditable
Master Data Management (MDM) creates a single, trusted view of customers, products, providers, locations, assets—so analytics are consistent, apps agree, and AI learns from clean truth.
SolveForce implements MDM as a system: governed models → match/merge rules → survivorship → versioned history → synchronized downstream consumers—wired to lineage, DQ tests, and SIEM/SOAR evidence.
Connective tissue:
🏛️ Data Platform → /data-warehouse • 🔄 Pipelines → /etl-elt • 📚 Governance → /data-governance
🔐 Privacy/Egress → /dlp • 👤 Lifecycle (identity links) → /identity-lifecycle
🧠 AI/RAG → /vector-databases • 📊 Evidence/Automation → /siem-soar
🎯 Outcomes (Why SolveForce MDM)
- One golden recordper domain with explainable survivorship and audit trail.
- Consistent analytics & AI— metrics and features reference the same IDs across apps and regions.
- Fewer data defects— standardization, validation, and DQ gates catch issues before downstream apps do.
- Faster change— governed models and APIs make adds/updates predictable.
- Audit-ready— lineage, versions, match decisions, approvals, and deltas export to SIEM.
🧭 Scope (What We Build & Operate)
- Domains— Customer/Patient/Provider • Product/Catalog • Location/Site • Supplier/Vendor • Asset/Device.
- Core services— standardization (names/addresses/phones/codes), match/merge, survivorship, versioning (SCD2), crosswalk/ID mapping.
- Integration— CDC/ELT ingest, hub & registry patterns, publish/subscribe to downstream apps (CRM/ERP/EHR/Commerce), event APIs.
- Stewardship— UI & workflows for review/exceptions; task queues; approvals; comments with history.
- Governance— business glossary, reference data (codes/values), policy catalog, data contracts, lineage.
🧱 Building Blocks (Spelled Out)
- Modeling
- Canonical schemas per domain (core + extensions); type systems, code sets, and valid state machines.
- Reference data management (taxonomy, hierarchies) with versioning.
- Standardization & Validation
- Address/postal & geocoding, phone/email normalization, product identifiers (GTIN/SKU/UDI), legal entity formats, healthcare/provider IDs (NPI), etc.
- Rule sets + regex/lookup & ML-assisted cleansers; DQ tests (nulls/range/PK-FK/uniqueness).
- Match & Merge
- Deterministic keys (exact/phonetic/id-based) + probabilistic/ML scores; threshold bands (auto-match/auto-suspect/no-match).
- Survivorship policy (source trust, recency, completeness, freshness) with explainable decisions and versioned history.
- Golden Record & Crosswalk
- Persist golden with SCD2; maintain crosswalks across source IDs; emit event on change for subscribers.
- Distribution
- Pub/Sub topics & REST/GraphQL APIs; CDC to marts and apps; caching & SLAs by domain.
- Security & Privacy
- RLS/CLS & label-based masking; DLP for PII/PHI/PAN; tokenization where required; immutable logs. → /dlp
- Evidence
- Lineage (column-level), DQ scores, match rules & overrides, steward actions, and publish events → SIEM/SOAR. → /siem-soar
🧰 Reference Architectures (Choose Your Fit)
A) Registry + Publish (Lightweight, Fast)
- Golden stored in warehouse/lake; registry tables + crosswalks; Pub/Sub events to apps; stewardship in BI/micro-UI.
B) Hub (Operational MDM)
- Dedicated hub with APIs, match/merge engine, workflow UI; bidirectional sync to CRM/ERP/EHR; near-real-time events.
C) Analytical MDM (Lakehouse)
- ELT/dbt standardization → match/merge in SQL/Spark; golden to curated zone; features exported to AI with provenance.
D) Privacy-First MDM
- Domain labels (PII/PHI/PAN), tokenization, RLS/CLS, regional perimeters; VPC SC/Private Endpoints for cloud services.
E) Multi-Region / Sovereign
- Region-bound masters + periodic reconciliation; conflict rules; regional caches; lawful processing & residency controls.
📐 SLO Guardrails (You Can Measure)
| KPI / SLO | Target (Recommended) |
|---|---|
| DQ pass rate (golden tables) | ≥ 99% |
| Match precision / recall (golden IDs) | ≥ 98% / ≥ 95% (domain-tuned) |
| Golden availability | ≥ 99.95% |
| Publish latency (source→golden event) | ≤ 1–5 min (stream: ≤ 30–60 s) |
| Stewardship SLA (critical queue) | ≤ 24 h resolution |
| Lineage coverage (column-level) | ≥ 95% |
| Evidence completeness (decisions/overrides) | = 100% |
SLO breaches open tickets and trigger SOAR playbooks (quarantine feed, re-run matching, roll back rule, notify owners). → /siem-soar
🔒 Compliance Mapping (Examples)
- HIPAA / 42 CFR Part 2— PHI labeling, minimum necessary, auditability; BAAs for tooling.
- PCI DSS— tokenization of PAN in customer records; CDE segmentation.
- GDPR/CCPA— consent flags, data minimization, residency, DSR workflows (access/erasure/rectification).
- SOX / ISO 27001 / SOC 2— change control, access logs, evidence packs.
📊 Observability & Evidence
- Pipelines— freshness, row counts, schema drift; DQ checks.
- Matching— candidate counts, precision/recall, threshold hits, override rates.
- Golden health— version churn, publish lag, subscriber delivery success.
- Stewardship— queue depth, aging, SLA breaches, action audit.
All streams export to SIEM; dashboards track SLOs, lineage, and cost ($/golden record).
💸 FinOps for MDM (Cost That Behaves)
- Per-domain budgets; $/golden record and $/1k events KPIs.
- Partitioning/clustering; small-object compaction; cache tiers; selective recompute.
- Auto-suspend/slot reservations where applicable; anomaly alerts.
🛠️ Implementation Blueprint (No-Surprise Rollout)
1) Domaining & glossary — define entities/attributes, owners, SLAs; map to sources. → /data-governance
2) Standardize & contracts — dbt/ELT rules; schema contracts; DQ tests & quarantine. → /etl-elt
3) Match/merge design — deterministic + probabilistic/ML rules; thresholds; survivorship; versioning.
4) Stewardship — workflows, UI, approvals; exception queues; notifications.
5) Golden & crosswalk — SCD2, ID maps; publish (events/APIs); subscribe patterns for apps.
6) Security & privacy — labels, RLS/CLS, tokenization, regional perimeters; keys/secrets posture.
7) Observability — lineage, DQ, precision/recall dashboards; SIEM/SOAR wiring.
8) Pilot & rings — one domain (e.g., Customer) → Product/Location → Supplier/Asset; success gates per SLO.
9) Operate — quarterly rule tuning; certification cycles; cost/SLO reviews; publish wins & RCAs.
✅ Pre-Engagement Checklist
🔄 Where MDM Fits (Recursive View)
1) Grammar — master data travels over /connectivity & lives on /networks-and-data-centers.
2) Syntax — curated truth in /data-warehouse with pipelines from /etl-elt.
3) Semantics — /data-governance + /dlp preserve integrity & privacy.
4) Pragmatics — /solveforce-ai retrieves masters with guardrails and cites or refuses.
📞 Establish a Golden Record That Everyone Trusts — and Auditors Approve
Key terms in plain language
Open a term for a concise explanation of language used on this page.
Latency
The time it takes data to travel between two points. Lower latency improves voice, video meetings, cloud applications, gaming, and other real-time services.
Service-Level Agreement (SLA)
A provider’s written commitment covering service targets such as availability, response time, repair time, and sometimes financial credits when commitments are missed.
Cloud Computing
Computing resources—such as applications, servers, storage, or databases—delivered from remote infrastructure and scaled as requirements change.
API
An application programming interface is a defined way for software systems to exchange data or request functions from one another.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Software designed to perform tasks involving prediction, classification, generation, reasoning, or decision support. Business use still requires clear data, governance, security, and human accountability.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Cloud-based servers, storage, and networking that customers configure and manage without owning the underlying data-center hardware.