EDMCS – A Powerful Tool for Metadata Management

EDMCS – An Overview

EDMCS, or Enterprise Data Management Cloud Service, is a cloud-based data management platform provided by Oracle. Have you ever thought of a business solution that could easily align business applications and provide a user-friendly interface to manage your enterprise applications? the initial version has been here for quite a few years, but Oracle is coming up with more functionalities that serve your purpose of managing the enterprise data through EDMCS.

A SaaS product for Master Data Management that resolves your complex problems of managing the master data at ease. Some use cases for EDMCS include a transactional system such as General Ledger, performance management applications for financial close and consolidation or enterprise planning, analytical services for reporting and business intelligence, and integration tools that are widely used for data transformation.

It’s fair to say that it’s DRM in the cloud but also fair to say it isn’t fully DRM technically. It possesses some of the features that DRM was already providing but now comes with integration with different applications in the cloud. Fascinating isn’t it!!! This modern, agile data management tool manages both transactional and analytical data including application-specific metadata, alternative business perspectives, corporate dimensions, mappings, reference data, and master data assets.

It’s safe to say that it works in a similar way as DRM but comes with different terminology and added functionalities. One major problem every organization deals with is the consistency across enterprise data which is taken care of by EDMCS which manages changes in your business by ensuring thorough consistency.

The term DRM has been used several times here, but it doesn’t mean that EDMCS is a complete shift of DRM to the cloud. Again…!!! It’s a separate tool having a new model and totally new functionalities. When we are talking about Master data management, we are just not sticking to this literal term, but it just goes beyond this. Like the management of Reference data, Controlled Access data, Glossary Information, Governing the data, and much more.

If you’re planning to start with the EDMCS course/training, know the basics of EPM first. Just the high-level would do. Having a strong knowledge of existing EPM products is not mandatory but background is always good for starters. The career path provides two options to choose from – Data Management and Administration. While it’s not a very complex and large tool unlike other EPM products, it does have a good scope across any organization that has Master Data Management as one of their core competencies.

The architecture provides a straightforward and transparent view of what actually happens in the background right from the time you register the applications till you extract the data from it.

When you register an application in EDMCS, it creates a default view with the same name as your application. In case you want to create more views, that can also be done for comparing or visualizing the data at a later stage. The views will house viewpoints that contain the metadata that you’ve imported either from the external applications or directly from the flat file.

Any comma-separated file having valid data is permissible for load. One thing to note here is that if you want to load the data directly from the external application, you may want to set up the connection first. This can be achieved at the time of initial registration or at a later stage as well. The user interface is so simplified that importing and exporting data looks fairly straightforward and simple even for beginners.

If you’re doing a comparison of EDMCS with DRM on-premise, then do not directly jump to the conclusion that EDMCS is a better tool or that DRM would be completely superseded by this latest product. There are still some parameters where DRM wins the race and qualifies as the robust Master Data Management tool but who knows what the future brings for EDMCS it could possibly add up to more functionalities and completely evict DRM from the race of one of the robust EPM products.

Read another article on Registering a Sample Application in EDMCS.

Also, read another article on Why EDMCS is beneficial as compared to other products for Metadata management.