InfoSphere MDM data model overview

The InfoSphere® MDM data model is at the heart of InfoSphere MDM. It is the last layer of InfoSphere MDM, encapsulated behind a rich set of services.

To understand the InfoSphere MDM data model and how it was designed, it is important to know that it is aligned with IAA/IFW Industry Models. The original model of InfoSphere MDM was specifically inspired by the Involved Party area of IAA, which is very similar to the Involved Party area of IFW from the perspective of InfoSphere MDM.

InfoSphere MDM is a physical instantiation of this model, structured to meet master data management needs, and while it is not an exact representation, there is a natural mapping. Not all concepts in IFW are represented in InfoSphere MDM, and vice versa, but the IFW models are used as basic templates as new InfoSphere MDM features are built. Similarly, the Product Domain of InfoSphere MDM was heavily influenced by the Product and Arrangements area of IFW.

The InfoSphere MDM data model is divided into two logical parts: COMMON and DOMAIN.

The DOMAIN data model contains the three data models for business domains offered with InfoSphere MDM: PARTY, PRODUCT and ACCOUNT. DOMAIN entities can be stand-alone or can have relationships to one another.

The InfoSphere MDM database tables are split into two groups, operational tables and history tables, enabling users to track change history and data auditing. Operational tables contain business data stored in InfoSphere MDM. History (or audit) tables are a mirror of operational tables with some additional columns to track history data. History tables contain the history data of the operational tables and are populated by triggers. There are more than 400 operational tables plus about 370 history tables in the InfoSphere MDM database.