A Database of Databases

You’re in IT, I’m in IT, and you know something, we love us some good data. Start with Charles Joseph Minards “March on Moscow”, a fantastic graphical display, and it answers questions.

So how do you answer questions about data when you don’t even know what data you have? You should create for your organization a data database. Really all this needs to be to start out with is a list of all the databases that you folks have internally. These can be applications, ERP, MRP systems, customer support systems, whatever, as well as anything that you can get from 3rd parties. The reason you want to have this is because that way when someone asks questions that are of a business nature, you know what database you can or can’t go to get an answer.

Now some of these databases are stored in your popular database engines such as Sequel, Oracle, whatever, or you don’t know what they are but you know how to get to them, meaning that you’ve got some kind of methodology to access them. But forewarned is forearmed so all you have to do is create a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which is kind of a database. Then just put in the name of the database app, the type of information that’s contained there, and here’s what it’s contained in. Make sure to keep that updated because that way when someone in your organization is asking you a question about business, you know where to go and that’s how you keep yourself from being replaced by MSPs like me.

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So what is your data’s stored in? And for the love of God don’t say Foxpro.