Common Data Model

Deploy a Common Model and Tackle the Data Integration Problem

A common data model architecture greatly facilitates data translation, data aggregation, rule execution, and other features required for data interoperability. When you design and deploy a common data model that is independent from any specific application, each application within your enterprise architecture will produce and consume messages in this common format.

A Common Data Model Drives Data Consistency Across Applications

As organizations attempt to figure out the data in the context of SOA or application integration, they are often driven to the idea of a common way to view data as a part of the architecture. This becomes a crucial aspect of designing a software infrastructure because different services, and applications, need to share semantics so that they deliver accurate and reliable results. Many pioneers are finding that the single most important component of an enterprise infrastructure is the data, which means you need to think carefully about how the data is managed and ultimately resolved. And while some infrastructures are successful when they first are piloted, IT managers and developers should try to face the data first and define a common data model so that the services are not bound to a particular schema.

Progress Has the Technology You Need to Build a Common Data Model

Progress® DataXtend™ Semantic Integrator (SI) addresses the common data model challenges in SOA and other information architectures. The DataXtend SI product uses industry standards models to manage the validation and transformation of data so it can be shared between applications that require different information or formats. By providing an automated, model-based approach to data interoperability, the DataXtend SI product helps customers reduce the cost, time and complexity of integrating systems. While conventional information management approaches simply manage format integrity, DataXtend SI delivers breakthrough technology that addresses the far costlier challenge of enabling companies to build a common data model that delivers semantic consistency of data shared between applications across distributed enterprises.

Common Data Models (or Standards) in Data Services

Below are some of the common data models (or industry standard models) that are being used today and are supported by DataXtend SI and Progress Artix Data Services.

	ACORD, the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development, is the insurance industry's nonprofit standards developer, a resource for information about object technology, EDI, XML and electronic commerce in the United States and abroad. ACORD is a nonprofit association whose mission is to facilitate the development and use of standards for the insurance, reinsurance and related financial services industries.
	ETIS is a membership based organisation which brings together the major telecommunications providers in Europe on key information and communication technology issues. ETIS enables its members to improve business performance by personal exchange of information on using ICT effectively.
	FpML (Financial products Markup Language) is an XML message standard for the OTC Derivatives industry. Automation of FpML data communications can help improve the validity of data and automate the generation of data for different client formats. For instance, instead of dealing with the added expense and project delays resulting from hand-coding and testing schemas, transformations, and validation rules, developers can use model-driven tools to import rich FpML data models, configure changes, and specialize data for various constituents.
	The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) initiative for the European financial infrastructure involves the creation of a zone for the euro in which all electronic payments are considered domestic, and where a difference between national and intra-European cross border payments does not exist. The SEPA vision sees all citizens, companies and other economic factors with the ability to make and receive payments throughout the European Union from a single bank account, as easily and safely as they can within their own country today. Todays' financial institutions are mandated to support the SEPA initiative.
	The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) operates a worldwide financial messaging network. Messages are securely and reliably exchanged between banks and other financial institutions. SWIFT also markets software and services to financial institutions, much of it for use on the SWIFTNet Network, and ISO 9362 bank identifier codes are popularly known as SWIFT codes.
	The TM Forum is an industry association focused on transforming business processes, operations and systems for managing and monetizing on-line information, communications and entertainment services. The TM Forum's Shared Information/Data or SID model is a unified common data model that provides a single number of terms of business objects included in basic business processes and also connections and relations between mentioned objects in telecommunications. John Wilmes, Chief Technical Architect for the Communications Sector, Progress Software, is the co-chair of the TMF's SID Technical Program, the specification lead of the OSS/J Pricing API, and a member of the OSS/J order management Expert Group. Progress Software offers the DataXtend SID Model Browser which will jump-start your learning about the SID and speed your organization's adoption of this important industry standard.