Data Quality, Fairy Tales, Dragons and Knights

"At this moment her thoughts were interrupted by a loud shouting of `Ahoy! Ahoy! Check! and a Knight dressed in crimson armour, came galloping down upon her, brandishing a great club. Just as he reached her, the horse stopped suddenly: `You're my prisoner!' the Knight cried, as he tumbled off his horse." - Alice through the Looking Glass, Louis Carroll


A recent post on the Data Governance blog mentioned this entertaining and thoughtful video about a dragon named Data Quality — indeed an innovative way to spread the data quality message. It’s a nice fairy tale with knights, dragons and all that stuff, and there’s even a moral to the story.

But in this fairy-tale, it took a costly knight with a bag full of tricks — and a really long time — before he succeeded in controlling the dragon. But it’s still a fairy tale. The problem is that in real life, there are many such knights, complete with shiny bags and glossy appearance, who all promise to conquer the dragon with almost no effort. Well, real life is no fairy tale. It takes more than a lone knight, no matter how shiny he looks, to conquer the problem. It takes powerful technology and experienced fighters to get control (and keep control) over the Data Quality dragon. No magic, no knights, no shortcuts.