SAS Business Data Network :: SAS(R) 9.4 Data Management: Overview

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 SAS 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.

The Type, Status, and Workflow columns provide workflow information for the terms.

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.

SAS Business Data Network provides the following benefits:

ability to enter non-collaborative terms, which do not undergo a review and approval process, or collaborative terms, which are reviewed and approved.

The following display shows a Notifications list, which is used in the workflow for collaborative term approval:

Notifications List
integration with SAS Workflow Studio. This integration enables you to 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.
support for multiple, customized term templates.
ability to customize the attributes of a term through the term type.