SAS Business Data Network
enables you to discover, document, and manage a glossary of business
terms. The record for a term can include a definition of the term;
the networked relationship of the term to other terms; and the relationship
of the term to other content such as documents, web pages, tables,
and business rules.
Typically, a user who
understands the business terminology used in an organization provides
the initial information in SAS Business Data Network. This user can
also associate documents or rules that describe each term. Import
and export features enable a user to quickly populate the SAS Business
Data Network with terms. Then, a more technical user can add information
related to the network of term. Examples of this information include
jobs that are used to modify the term and data that is related to
the network of terms. The network of terms is fully integrated with
impact analysis to help you understand how your physical data and
business processes interrelate. The user interface supports roles,
capabilities and security for terms, and term attributes. The roles
and capabilities are fully customizable to match your site requirements.
You can enter non-collaborative
terms, which do not undergo a review and approval process, or collaborative
terms, which are reviewed and approved. Simple collaboration consists
of a review for business content and approval. Extended collaboration
adds a technical review to the review and approval process.
Collaborative terms
are enabled through integration with SAS Workflow Studio. Users can
send terms into a collaborative flow for review and approval before
publishing. Several default collaborative reviews are available for
customization, or you can create your own collaborative reviews to
match your business needs. The SAS Business Data Network user interface
guides the user through the collaborative review flow for a term.
Status is also shown at each step in the review.
You can quickly see
collaborative review tasks that are waiting on their input in the
Task Manager View in SAS Data Management Console and in views in the
network. A number of quick actions enable users to update the review
for multiple terms together. Different reviews can be used for different
actions in the network of terms. For example, you can have one review
that you use when creating terms and another when deleting terms.
You can also tie different reviews to different term types. For example,
you can have one review when working with supplier information types
and a different one for working with your data dictionary tables and
columns.
Another important new
feature is support for multiple, customized term templates. These
templates are defined by creating and editing term types. See
Managing Term Types. Administrators
are now able to create templates with custom attributes for terms
and term hierarchies. You can also determine whether attributes are
required and set default values for attributes in a term. Required
attributes can be useful if you want to enforce the collection of
standard information for every term that is built from the template.
Most of the attributes
of a term are now fully customizable via the term type. For example,
you might have a set of term types that represent the tables and columns
in your data dictionary. You can create a term type for tables with
the information that you want to use to describe tables in your system.
Then you can create a different column template with the information
that you want to capture about columns. You can have any number of
custom term types. These term types serve as templates that match
the information that you want to capture in your terms.