Your boss tells you another group in your company is “reconciling” data from a “different” perspective.
His boss wants both sets of data reconciled with each other. And to have the separate views as well.
How hard could it be?
You have free software in the form of Google Refine 2.0
This is beginning to sound like a Ballywood horror movie.
You have no explicit basis for reconciling your data, no documented rules* and the other project is in the same shape.
It will take endless meetings to thrash out an implicit mapping that enables the “reconciliation” of the “reconciliations.”
Which works until either group encounters new data that needs to be “reconciled.”
If you could only treat data structures as first class subjects, which have sets of key/values pairs, then reconciliation and new data would not be such a pain.
Then your reconciliation would be extensible.
Well, it is extensible now, but it is painful and error prone.
Unfortunately that thought comes as you are getting another Botox shot so you can sit through another “reconciliation” meeting.
*No documented rules. To say “When you see X, do Y.” is a recipe, not a rule. Rules imply some modicum of understanding.