Page 196 - Data Architecture

Chapter 5.1: The Siloed Application Environment

Fig. 5.1.3 No sharability across applications.

Certainly, data can be shared from a mechanical standpoint. But merely passing data
from one application to another does no good when the data mean something different in
each application. As a simple example of why data are not interchangeable among
applications, consider the following example. Suppose that there are three siloed
applications—application A, application B, and application C.

Suppose that all three applications have a field of data—amount of sale—and in each
amount of sale is a dollar value. It seems like it would be easy enough to exchange the
values between the applications. But a closer examination turns up the fact that
application A measures American dollars, application B measures Australian dollars, and
application C measures Canadian dollars. At first glance, there is consistency among the

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