But what is age actually - key figure or attribute?
dataspot. celebrates its birthday - we are now 7! On March 10, 2016, Michaela Mader, Barbara Kainz and Alexander Kainz founded the company dataspot. Celebrating the advancing age, however, we ask ourselves: what does age actually mean professionally? In metadata management, it is important to model cleanly and correctly. But that is easier said than done. This is because our customers often encounter special cases during modeling that are not so clearly mappable at first click. Through methodological best practice - for seven years now within dataspot. - however, a clear approach has been established. On our birthday, we therefore deal with a methodological question that never gets old: Is age a key figure or a calculated attribute? In the business data model, we model attributes - properties of business objects - such as a customer's name, address, and date of birth. Metrics, however, are measures and quantify our business - that is, make overarching statements about multiple instances (records) of a business object. They are documented in the key figure model, but linked to the basic data (business data and reference data) as a business origin. In this way, it is comprehensible for everyone how key figures are calculated from the operational business. Does the age as a calculation from the date of birth of a customer now belong in the key figure model or in the business data model?
The "age" is a so-called calculated attribute, because it can be derived from the attribute date of birth. Because one refers the date of birth to the today's date, then one receives the age - a point in time related condition. This is valid for the same length of time as the data that was used for the calculation, i.e. the customer's date of birth. Other examples of calculated attributes include the balance of an account, or the remaining useful life of a building. We model all these calculated attributes in the subject data model and specify the attribute from which they are calculated as the subject origin.
But why not a key figure?
In contrast to a key figure, the calculated attribute age only makes a statement about a single data record - therefore about a single customer. A key figure is calculated across all or a group of customers (e.g. average age of customers or average age of active customers).
By the way, both natural and legal persons have an "attribute" age. The latter has its origin merely in the date of foundation. Therefore, dataspot. also celebrates getting older, because birthdays have to be celebrated. Therefore, we toast to seven years of successful Data Excellence Consulting and Metadata Management - age or not. After all, age is just a number, but this insight also belongs in your data catalog.
