Finding, understanding and using metadata from packaged applications
Where’s the Data?
Many large businesses are dependent on packaged Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM packages, to run large portions of their business.
Ever since packaged applications have been used as a source of data for Information Management projects, one question has been a constant challenge and source of frustration to data professionals seeking to use their data for their projects.
That question is: “Where’s the data?”
By that, we do not mean “How much have we sold, of a specific product, in a specific region, over a specific period and is that trend going up or down?” What we mean is how to locate where that data resides in order that the data professional can answer those business questions.
In some instances, for example, internally developed applications or relatively small packaged systems, it may be easy to find and make use of their metadata because of their relatively small size or because the developers are still around.
For many, however, particularly those packages from SAP, Oracle and increasingly SaaS Cloud-based vendors such as Salesforce and Microsoft, the task of discovery has remained stuck in the past with virtually no tools available for data professionals, rather than technical specialists, to use.
This "Where's the data?" white paper offers insight into why the traditional methods are not effective and an alternative approach to solving the problem using Safyr®, our Application Metadata Intelligence software product.