Following up on last years post on Big Data Quality, Santa Style (and previous years of Santa style posts) it is time to see how Santa may utilize a data lake.
I imagine that handling product information must be a big pain point at the Santa Corporation. All the product information from suppliers of present items comes in using different standards and various languages. In the same way the wish lists from boys and girls comes in many languages and using many different wordings.
Forcing the same standard on all suppliers (and boys and girls) is quite utopic – even for Santa.
So using a data lake for product information seems to be a good choice, not at least if that data lake encompasses the whole business ecosystem around the Santa Corporation.
By joining Product Data Lake the Santa Corporation will put their required product portfolio and the needed attributes for the products into Product Data Lake in all the languages operated at Santa’s site.
The suppliers of toys, electronics, books, clothes and heaps of other nice things will by joining Product Data Lake in the same way put their products and the attributes offered into Product Data Lake.
In here, the products and attributes will be linked to the ones used by Santa. But this is only the beginning of a joyful ride. The products and attributes can also be linked to all the other trading partners on Product Data Lake, so the manufacturer will only have to upload this information once.
Ho ho ho. This year it is not only nice boys and girls that gets a present – and this year the right one -from Santa. Smart suppliers will get a big present too.
Liliendahl on Data Quality 