What Is SAS Business Data Network?

SAS Business Data Network is an application that enables you to manage business terms. It supports a collaborative approach to managing the following information:
  • descriptions of business terms, including their requirements and attributes
  • related source data and reference data
  • contacts (such as technical owners, business owners, and interested parties)
  • relationships between terms and processes (such as SAS Data Management Studio jobs, services, and business rules)
By linking terms to business rules and data monitoring processes, SAS Business Data Network provides a single entry point for all data consumers to better understand their data. Data stewards, IT staff, and enterprise architects can use the terms to promote a common vocabulary across projects and business units. Permissions can be set to allow only specific users to access or control the data in Business Data Network.
SAS Business Data Network enables collaboration of domain knowledge between business users, technical users, and data stewards. SAS Business Data Network can be used as a single entry point for all data consumers to better understand their data. It consists of a web user interface that documents business terms and their associated rules, jobs, applications, data, documentation, and other information. Technical users use the network to document information about tables and columns that implement the business terminology. This information can be used to relate jobs and other information to terms and to share knowledge about data transformations. It serves as a data dictionary to describe details of data models and other data-related information. Data stewards can view data from a business standpoint to better visualize problem areas by domain in order to identify and fix data issues more effectively.