Information Architecture News

Good definitions – part 2

Posted by Brenda Reeb on

An earlier post introduced the 2 parts of a good definition and discussed Part 1 – identify the class or set of things to which the business term belongs, and then differentiates that term from all others in the class or set. This post discusses Part 2. Part 2, which is optional, contains usage guidelines or how to apply the concept being defined.  Sometimes these guidelines are called business rules.  They can include references to time (spring semester, fiscal year), […]

What is the magic number of Functional Areas?

Posted by Brenda Reeb on

The answer – as many as you need! Staff at iData, the company that provides Data Cookbook, recently published an analysis of the number of Functional Areas that each customer maintains. There are currently about 120 customers. The median count of functional areas is 8, and the average is 11. The distribution is far from normal – one standard deviation (~9) in either direction covers nearly 90% of clients in the sample. The inter-quartile range runs from 6 to 13. […]

CUMSAL technical definitions added to Data Cookbook

Posted by Brenda Reeb on

Just over 90 technical definitions for the CUMSAL Cognos data mart have been added to Data Cookbook.  This set of technical definitions maps the CUMSAL Cognos data model attributes to corresponding Cookbook terms and definitions.  With this mapping, CUMSAL report users can get trusted explanations for the sometimes cryptic meaning of CUMSAL attributes. To view this set of technical definitions, select the Browse Definitions section in Data Cookbook and then select CUMSAL from the Data System drop down menu.  This […]