Keith Gordon - Principles of Data Management

2022 BCS Learning and Development Ltd

The right of Keith Gordon to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78017-5911

PDF ISBN: 978-1-78017-5928

ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78017-5935

British Cataloguing in Publication Data.

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Publishers acknowledgements

Reviewers: Ian Rush and Ian Wallis

Publisher: Ian Borthwick

Commissioning editor: Rebecca You

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There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Niccol Machiavelli (14691527)

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.

Socrates (470399 BC)

Data analysis is a very useful tool for efficient database design. It is much less useful as a means of identifying information requirements (especially where these are fuzzy and unstructured), or in allowing different viewpoints to be taken into consideration. Too often based on an analysis of current situations, data analysis in the extreme case is a great way of encapsulating organisational ineffectiveness in the resultant database!

Professor Robert Galliers (1947)

Keith Gordon was a professional soldier for 38 years, joining the Army straight from school at 16 and retiring on his 55th birthday. During his service he had a number of technical, educational and managerial appointments and gained a Higher National Certificate in Electrical, Electronic and Telecommunications Engineering; a Certificate in Education from the Institute of Education of the University of London; a Bachelor of Arts from the Open University; and a Master of Science from Cranfield Institute of Technology. From 1992 until his retirement in 1998, he was first a member of and then head of the Armys data management team.

After retiring from the Army, he spent just over 20 years as an independent consultant and lecturer specialising in data management and business analysis. As well as developing and teaching commercial courses, he was a tutor for the Open University for several years.

He is a Chartered Member of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, and a Fellow of the Institution for Engineering and Technology.

He holds the Diploma in Business Systems Development Specialising in Data Management from BCS formerly the Information Systems Examination Board (ISEB) and he sat on their Business Systems Development Examination and Audit and Accreditation Panels for many years.

He represents the UK within the international standards development community by being nominated by the British Standards Institution to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC32 WG2 (Information Technology Data Management and Interchange Metadata).

He was the secretary of the BCS Data Management Specialist Group between 2006 and 2012 and, as a founder member, was a committee member of the UK chapter of DAMA International, the worldwide association of data management professionals, between 2003 and 2012.