Through the Looking-Glass was Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  Both books, as well as most of his other writing, are examples of the genre of literary nonsense, where both sensical and nonsensical elements are used to challenge the standard conventions of either language or logic, or both.

Although I am definitely a fan of literary nonsense, I am not a fan of nonsense when it comes to data quality (DQ) best practices.

One of my favorite DQ-Tips is “go talk with the people using the data.”

As I blogged about in Data Gazers (borrowing a great phrase from Arkady Maydanchik), a most bizarre phenomenon (that I have witnessed too many times) is that as a data quality initiative “progresses” it tends to get further and further away from the people who use the data on a daily basis.

Through the Looking-Glass begins with Alice pondering what the world is like on the other side of a mirror’s reflection.  Many data quality initiatives eventually reach a point where you begin pondering what the data actually means as you are viewing it Through the Data Gazing Glass (you might simply refer to it as your computer screen).

Through the Looking-Glass ends with Alice awakening from a dream, and left pondering whether the story’s characters are a figment of her imagination—or if she is a figment of their imagination.  (It is commonly believed that Lewis Carroll’s point was to suggest that life itself is but a dream.)

Hopefully, long before your data quality dream experiences a rather rude awakening, you will discover that data has it own special version of Jabberwocky . . .

Data Jabberwocky

’Twas Data Profiling time, and the relational table,
Was VAR’ing and CHAR’ing all along the Ethernet cable.
Missing it seemed were the values of most of the fields,
Though “NULLs not allowed” is what the DDL did reveal.

Beware the Data Jabberwock, my fellow Data Gazer,
You’ll find it has bits that bite as well as bytes that razor!
Beware its poor data quality, and always be wary,
Of its hidden data defects, they really are quite scary!

Through the Data Gazing Glass,
While not a long time it may seem has past,
Long before you go screaming mad like a banshee,
May you soon enough realize, you need the help of a SME.

Subject matter experts are fluent in Data Jabberwocky,
Therefore, always over to them must you walkie then talkie.
With their help, discover you may, with patience and time,
Data quality is made easier by remembering this silly rhyme.

“Comment Me”

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