Talking about data silos is popular. Particularly with a tone of indignation, about someone else’s data silo. But, like the weather, everyone talks about data silos, but nobody does anything about them. In fact, if you look closely, all solutions to data silos, are (drum roll please!), more data silos.
To be sure, some data silos are more common than others but every data format is a data silo to someone who doesn’t use that format. Take the detailed records from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on candidates, parties and other committees as an example. Important stuff for US residents interested in who bought access to their local representative or senator.
The tutorial on how to convert the files to MS Access clues you in that the files are in fixed width fields, or as the tutorial puts it: “Notice that a columns’ start value is the previous columns’ start value plus its’ width value (except for the first column, which is always “1”).” That sounds real familiar.
But, we return to the download page where we read about how to handle overpunch characters. Overpunch characters? Oh, as in COBOL. Now that’s an old data silo.
The point being that for all the talk about data silos we never escape them. Data formats are data silos. Get over it.
What we can do is make it possible to view information in one data silo as though it were held by another data silo. And if you must switch from one data silo to another, the time, cost and uncertainty of the migration can be reduced. (to be continued)