Ataccama
A data management platform combining cataloguing, quality rules and master data handling in one product.
Ataccama is a data management platform covering several areas that are often bought separately: cataloguing what data exists, profiling and measuring its quality, applying rules to correct it, and managing master records. The components share one platform, so a quality rule and the catalogue entry it applies to are connected rather than held in different systems.
What the platform covers
Ataccama brings together capabilities that are frequently bought as separate products: a catalogue of what data exists, profiling and quality measurement, and master data management.
Whether that combination is an advantage depends on your situation, and the argument for it is worth setting out.
Why cataloguing and quality belong together
A catalogue answers what data exists. It does not answer whether that data can be relied on.
Those two questions are asked in the same breath. An analyst finding a promising table immediately wants to know whether it is any good: is it complete, is it current, are the values sensible.
When the catalogue and the quality measurements live in separate systems, answering the second question means going somewhere else, and in practice it usually does not get asked. The table is used, and its problems are discovered later in a figure that looks wrong.
Holding both in one platform means an asset's entry shows its measured quality alongside its description.
Profiling comes before rules
Profiling examines data and reports what it actually contains: the distribution of values, the patterns present, how often fields are empty, what the outliers are.
The order matters. It is tempting to start by writing quality rules, and doing so means writing rules based on what you assume the data looks like.
Profiling tells you what it really looks like. A column that should hold a country code turns out to contain fourteen different formats. A field that was supposed to be mandatory is empty in a third of rows. Those discoveries are what tell you which rules are worth writing, and they are rarely the rules you would have guessed.
Quality rules and measurement
Rules define what acceptable looks like, and results are measured so quality can be reported over time.
Measurement is the part that turns quality from an opinion into a fact. Without it, discussions about data quality consist of people asserting that the data is bad and other people disagreeing. With scores tracked over time, there is a figure, and it can be shown to be improving or not.
Master data
The same customer exists in the billing system, the support system and the marketing platform, with different identifiers and slightly different details. So does the same product and the same supplier.
Master data management matches those records and consolidates them into a single version. It is genuinely difficult work, because deciding that two similar records are the same entity requires judgement encoded as matching rules, and getting it wrong merges two real customers or leaves one split in two.
Who uses Ataccama
Ataccama is used by large organisations with data quality and master data requirements, particularly in financial services, insurance and retail where duplicate entity records and quality measurement have direct commercial consequences.
Points to consider
It is an enterprise platform, adopted as a platform decision with the deployment and licensing that implies.
The breadth is an advantage where several of the capabilities are needed and unnecessary weight where only one is. An organisation wanting quality checks in a pipeline will find lighter tools more proportionate.
Master data work in particular is a programme rather than an installation. The matching rules encode business judgement about what constitutes the same entity, and that judgement has to come from the business rather than the tool.
Getting started
The official site links to documentation covering connecting sources, running profiling, defining quality rules and configuring master data matching. Profiling a source you believe you understand is the usual first exercise, and it typically produces surprises.
Key features of Ataccama
Capabilities described in the official documentation.
Profiling of connected data
Sources are examined to report what values columns actually contain, including patterns and outliers.
Quality rules and scoring
Rules define what acceptable data looks like, and results are measured so quality can be reported over time.
Master data handling
Records describing the same entity across systems are matched and consolidated into a single version.
A shared catalogue
Discovered assets, their quality results and their rules are held together rather than in separate tools.
Advantages of Ataccama
Factual advantages that follow from the features above.
Quality is visible against the catalogue
Because both live in one platform, an asset's entry shows how good its data actually is.
Problems are found before rules are written
Profiling reveals what the data contains, which is what tells you which rules are worth writing.
One version of an entity can be produced
Matching records across systems resolves the duplicates that arise when the same customer exists several times.
Fewer products to integrate
Covering cataloguing, quality and master data together removes the work of connecting separate tools.
Common use cases for Ataccama
Situations the official documentation describes this tool as being used for.
Measuring the quality of key data
Rules are applied to important tables and results tracked so quality is reported rather than assumed.
Resolving duplicate customer records
Records for the same customer across systems are matched and consolidated into one version.
Understanding an unfamiliar source
Profiling reports what a source actually contains before any rules or transformations are designed.
Reporting quality to a governance group
Scores measured over time give a governance function figures rather than impressions.
Official website
Everything on this page is based on the official documentation for Ataccama. You can read the source here.
Ataccama official documentation