MDS Versioning, Permission and Security

October 20, 2010

Introduction

Master Data Services (MDS) is a master data management platform, which allows you to create a centralized hub for your master data. This single and centralized authoritative master data source provides consistent master data to all the business applications aligned to it. In this article I am going to demonstrate how model versioning works in MDS and then I will be talking about how security works in MDS.

How versioning works in MDS...

Master Data Services (MDS) creates a default initial version of your model data when you create a model for the first time. Then, as per your need, you can create as many versions you want for your model, either in sequential fashion (one version after another) or in simultaneous fashion (multiple versions in parallel). This way you can ensure you have a dedicated/consistent version of your master data for downstream consumption while at the same time having another version for adding/deleting/modifying members or for testing your model data, without compromising consistency in master data availability. A version could be in either of these three status modes:

• Open – A model version of “Open” status mode allows everyone with required access to add/delete/change the members, hierarchies of the model. You can also run the business rules validation process to validate the data that it contains.
• Locked – A model version of “Locked” status mode allows only the model administrator to add/delete/change the members and hierarchies of the model and other users are allowed only read access to the locked version (even though they might be having update permission on the model). A version is switched to “Locked” status mode to run the business rule validation and fix any issues with the data and that’s the reason not all users, except model administrator, are allowed to do the changes just to avoid inadvertent modification. A locked version can be switched back to Open status mode if required (to allow other users to do changes other than model administrator) or can be switched forward to “Committed” status mode.
• Committed – Once all the business rules validation has passed in “Locked” status mode, this model version can be transitioned to “Committed” status mode and then you can create subscription views against this version to let reporting and analytical applications consume master data from the model version. A committed version cannot be unlocked (this means no changes are allowed on the committed version) though you can create another copy of committed version in parallel to do changes to the members and hierarchies.

Go to the Master Data Manager UI, select the appropriate model, and version and click on Version Management (depending on your permission level this option might or might not be visible to you. For more detail about security and permission refer to next section in this article) option as shown below:

Figure 1 - Version Management

On the “Manage Versions” screen, select the model and you will see a list of all the versions of the selected model. Select the version in the grid and the corresponding option is enabled in the tool-bar; for example, if the version is in open status mode you will see “Lock selected version” option or if the version is in a locked state you will see “Unlock selected version”.

Figure 2 - Manage Versions

To validate a model’s version, click on the Validate Version menu bar then select the appropriate model and its version and click on the “Validate version” icon as shown below:

Figure 3 - Validate Version 1

Once validation of the selected model and version has passed, you will see “Commit version” options are enabled as shown below. Click on it to move your selected model and version in committed status mode:

Figure 4 - Validate Version 2

Once a version is committed it cannot be brought back in Locked/Open status mode. Although you can create a copy of the committed version as shown below:

Figure 5 - Copy version 1

Double click on the column of the grid if you want to change the value for name, description columns etc.

Figure 6 - Copy version 2