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Data Development and Evolution
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Have Data, Will Travel: A Data-Centric Approach to Enterprise Systems Development
Why is the data-centric approach appropriate for am/fm/gis Applications development?
Experience to date with the data-centric approach applied to AM/FM/GIS applications
development has been exceedingly positive. This success has spawned some observations as to
why this has been the case. These are:
- LeveraRinE Empowerment Early AM/FM/GIS applications that focus on providing
complicated functionality typically require extended requirements analysis. On the other hand,
a great deal of business benefit can be derived just from providing users with access to their
data, and to their data integrated with other data sources as soon as possible. It has often been
observed that by providing convenient and quick access to geospatial data integrated with
tabular data, a significant number of end user requirements can be satisfied. This approach taps
into the significant energy that personnel apply when empowered to improve business
processes.
- Taking the Easy Road for a Change. It is much easier to build a system that easily delivers a
user's data than it is to build a system that provides new application functionality. The datacentric
approach focuses on the data, providing broad and easy-to-use access to that data.
Speedy Implementation. In the data-centric approach, applications can deliver access to
complex geospatial data in a few months. This approach specifically rejects project schedules
that exceed six months as being too risky and generally unrealistic. Typically, the business
environment and software both change too much in that timeframe.
- Technology Neutral. Because this approach focuses on the data and on data delivery, it is
fundamentally technology neutral. Development efforts are focused on collecting, organizing,
and providing access to geospatial and related tabular data, not on the application of a tool set
from one vendor. Conversely, it is quite reasonable for this approach to function with multiple
vendors' tools operating side-by-side.
Breaking Traditional
Organizational Barriers to Data Sharing. The data-centric methodology
decouples data consumers from data providers. That is, instead of a
direct link between a d~~a provider and their users, data from data
providers is incorporated into an enterprise data store that is then
deployed to many different users. This decoupling yields a number of
positive effects. Data consumers can easily access data from a variety
of data producers, benefiting from the multiplicative effect of combined
data sources.
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