Data Warehouse ownership

Who is the owner of DWH? It is very important issue but hard to answer. Here are several examples from the practice how to apply DWH ownership.

Data ownership

First there can be two levels of data ownership: production data and cube/theme data. Production data is clear, users who want to use data from production system which is in this case usually one have to ask production system owner for allowing access rights. But more complicated is how to share data ownership when cubes or themes are made from several production sources and data is worthless without good context, good context provides build data cube. Owner of the cube asks for data access from source systems but potential users of the cube ask cube owner. Who is the owner of the cube? It is the person who initiated cube building, request who started building of the cube.

Making fragmented ownership by dimensions and measures ownership is too complicated and messes complete procedure.

Data Warehouse ownership

If the ownerships has to belong to only one department it is a little bit risky decision. For example if IT is owner of DWH, they are just service providers without in deep knowledge what to do exactly with content. Perhaps better variant is to give ownership to finance, to be more precise to controlling. Reason for this decision is general view over definitions, external and management reporting. Controlling knows best what kind of products will be made upon DWH. Perhaps best solution would be to establish committee of experts from all business areas with lead from controlling and to give dwh ownership to this body.

Without ownership there will be no strategic development of DWH system. DWH will only run to cover current needs without any pro active approach. Data quality management will be very doubtful and at the end there will be no one to decide how to handle vast quantities of needed actions.

There is a strong need to declare officially DWH ownership and to establish data security procedures as soon as possible.

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