Choose Your Reading Style
A professional-level summary covering key definitions, frameworks, and exam-relevant points.
Master Data Management: Professional Framework
Master Data Management (MDM) is the discipline of creating and maintaining a single, authoritative, accurate, and complete representation of an organisation's critical shared data entities. It is one of the highest-weighted knowledge areas in the CDMP exam, accounting for approximately 10% of questions.
MDM Implementation Styles
| Style | Hub Role | Source System Impact | Complexity | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Registry | Index only — points to source records | None | Low | Initial MDM with minimal disruption |
| Consolidation | Analytical hub — consolidated view | None | Medium | Reporting and analytics use cases |
| Coexistence | Hub publishes back to sources | Updated with golden record values | High | Operational consistency required |
| Centralised | Single system of record | Replaced by hub | Very High | Full MDM transformation |
Key Concepts
The golden record is the single, authoritative master data entity created by consolidating and cleansing data from multiple source systems. Survivorship rules are the business logic that determines which attribute values from competing source records are selected for the golden record. Common survivorship strategies include most-recent-wins, most-trusted-source, most-frequent-value, and field-level rules.
Master Data vs Reference Data
Master data describes the core business entities that an organisation transacts with (customers, products, employees, suppliers). Reference data is the set of permissible values used to classify or categorise other data (country codes, currency codes, product categories). Both are managed under the Reference and Master Data knowledge area in the DMBOK, but they have distinct management approaches.
CDMP Exam Focus
Key exam topics include: the definition and scope of master data, the four MDM implementation styles and their trade-offs, the concept of the golden record, survivorship rules and their application, the distinction between master data and reference data, and the relationship between MDM and data governance.