Recently I collaborated with Andrew Milner in a scenario in MDS SQL 2012 to provide the client the ability to with between multiple Versions and Flags via Subscription Views. Vishal Singh did an excellent job in implementing this scenario in MDS.

Versions and Flags

MDS Model defines the structure of the Data and Version defines the content of the data. In Master Data Services, multiple versions of the master data can be created within a model. Versions created in model can be in sequence fashion (one version after another) or in simultaneous fashion (multiple versions in parallel). This way we ensure we have a dedicated/consistent version of our master data for downstream consumption while at the same time having another version for adding/deleting/modifying members or for testing our model data, without compromising consistency in master data availability.

For example: We may want to have one version of the data marked as “current”, and another set marked as “proposed” using Version Flags. When the proposed version is confirmed as valid and clean, we can move that from proposed to current. So the version marked as “current” will always be the “Golden Copy of the Data”

When to Use Versions

Use versions to:

• Prevent users from making changes while all data validates successfully against business rules.
• Lock down a model for use by subscribing systems.

Version Flags

When a version is ready for users or for a subscribing system, we can set a flag to identify the version. We can move flag from version to version as required. Flags help user and downstream applications identify which version of a model to use.

Scenario:

Create Model and 3 Versions (one in Commit Status and other two in Open Status).

An initial version is created by default when a model is created. In order to create two other versions in Open status, commit default version and create two versions from the committed version. Name two versions as PROD and TEST and map it to two different Flags PROD and TEST respectively. Data inserted in two different versions are mutually exclusive meaning they are not related to each other. Data modified in one of the version will not be reflected in another version. Subscription views created based on Version will also have data related to that Version only. Flags help user and downstream applications identify which version of a model to use.

For example: Created a sample Model called “Employee” and created three versions VERSION_1 (committed status), MDS (open status) and SSIS (open status). In the same way created two flags MDS and SSIS mapped to MDS and SSIS versions respectively. Data present in different versions (MDS and SSIS) are not related and thus not in synch.

In Employee entity there is one employee which works in two different technologies MDS and SSIS as highlighted below. Employee (Employee ID: IW003) works in both SSIS and MDS technology but there is a difference in their name in different versions.

Records highlighted above are common in MDS and SSIS versions of Employee Entity with only difference in their Name (EmployeeID: IW003) . Subscription view created on the MDS (linked to MDS flag) and SSIS (linked to SSIS flag) versions will have different set of data. Please find below the data present in subscription-view:

Downstream application will fetch data based on the subscription views which they are consuming. If downstream application is consuming MDS version (mapped to MDS flag) will have different data and one consuming SSIS version (mapped to SSIS flag) will have different of data.

Architecture in MDS Acme

We have used below logic in MDS Acme:

In MDS Acme we have two different data sources Production and Test. Data coming from different data sources are getting inserted in the same model (Sample) and same entities. Two versions V1 and V2 are created pointing to Production and Test data sources. Versions V1 and V2 are mapped to Flags F1 and F2 respectively. Subscription views created are linked to Version flags. Downstream applications are consuming data based on the subscription view published. When a new Version needs to be created called V3 which is copy of version V2 below steps need to be done:

1. Validate and commit old version V2 as in this example.
2. Copy the old version and create a new version called V3 from V2
3. Remove the flag F1 from the old version V2
4. Map flag F1 to newly created version V3

As the subscription views are created based on the Version Flags and not on Version. So we don’t have to change the subscription views for the newly created version. Downstream application will now be able to fetch data from the new versions instead of old versions.