Relational Fidelity and Analytics Integrity

My November blog post @All Analytics:


I have shown in previous posts that reliance on sheer visual inspection of database tables for data analysis is a risky proposition, with high probability of misinterpretation. All the more so when databases are complex, with wide and/or long tables. The analyst needs to know table interpretations -- their real-world meaning derived from the business rules with which the database must be consistent. The problem is that they are left out of the tables because DBMSs do not understand them, nor are they usually documented in the database (as they well should be), because database professionals underestimate their importance.

Read it all. (Please comment there, not here)