DACO flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Data governance definition

The exercise of authority and control over data assets, covering decision rights, accountability, policies, and processes that ensure data is managed as a valued enterprise asset.

RACI accountability rule

Each decision or deliverable should have exactly one Accountable role; Responsible roles perform the work, Consulted roles give input, and Informed roles receive updates.

Data steward role

An operational role that enforces governance standards day to day, resolves data issues within a domain, and escalates unresolved conflicts to the governance council.

Policy versus standard

A policy states mandatory intent and principles; a standard specifies the concrete, measurable requirement that implements the policy, such as an encryption algorithm.

Data strategy components

Vision, business case, guiding principles, prioritized initiatives, funding model, and outcome-based success metrics that connect data investments to business goals.

Three-schema architecture

Separates external user views, a conceptual business-level schema, and an internal physical storage schema, with mappings that keep applications independent of storage changes.

Third normal form

A relation is in 3NF when it is in 2NF and no non-key attribute depends transitively on the primary key; each non-key attribute depends only on the key.

Star schema

A dimensional design with a central fact table holding measures and foreign keys, surrounded by denormalized dimension tables that provide descriptive context for analysis.

SCD Type 2

A slowly changing dimension technique that preserves history by inserting a new row for each change, with effective dates and a current-record flag.

Data Vault components

Hubs store business keys, links record relationships between hubs, and satellites hold descriptive attributes with full history and load timestamps.

Kimball bus matrix

A planning grid with business processes as rows and conformed dimensions as columns; marked intersections identify which dimensions each data mart shares.

ACID properties

Atomicity makes transactions all-or-nothing; consistency preserves constraints; isolation prevents interference between concurrent transactions; durability keeps committed changes after failure.

CAP theorem

In a distributed system experiencing a network partition, you must sacrifice either consistency or availability; partition tolerance is assumed because networks fail.

RPO versus RTO

Recovery point objective is the maximum tolerable data loss measured in time; recovery time objective is the maximum tolerable downtime before service is restored.

Incremental versus differential backup

An incremental backup captures changes since the most recent backup of any type; a differential captures changes since the last full backup, growing larger over time.

RAID 5

Block-level striping with distributed parity across all disks; it survives the failure of one disk, and rebuilds reconstruct lost data from parity.

CIA triad

The core security objectives: confidentiality restricts access to authorized parties, integrity keeps data accurate and complete, and availability ensures timely access.

RBAC versus ABAC

Role-based access control grants permissions to roles that users assume; attribute-based access control evaluates attributes of user, resource, action, and context at request time.

Tokenization

Replaces sensitive values with surrogate tokens mapped back through a secure vault; unlike hashing, it is reversible and preserves format for downstream systems.

GDPR breach notification

Controllers must notify the supervisory authority of a personal data breach within 72 hours of becoming aware, unless the breach is unlikely to risk rights.

Data classification tiers

Labels such as public, internal, confidential, and restricted that determine handling rules for storage, transmission, access approval, retention, and destruction.

Multi-factor authentication

Requires two or more distinct factor types: something you know, something you have, or something you are; repeating one factor type does not count.

ETL versus ELT

ETL transforms data before loading into the target; ELT loads raw data first and transforms it inside the target platform, using its compute and storage.

Change data capture

An integration pattern that reads database logs or triggers to capture only inserted, updated, and deleted rows, delivering near-real-time deltas instead of full extracts.

At-least-once delivery

A messaging guarantee where every message is delivered but duplicates may occur; consumers must be idempotent so repeated processing yields the same result.

Canonical data model

A shared, neutral representation of data used between systems, reducing many-to-many mappings to many-to-one and simplifying integration maintenance.

Data virtualization

An abstraction layer that queries and federates data across sources without physically moving or replicating it, presenting a unified logical view.

Data quality dimensions

Measurable characteristics including completeness, accuracy, consistency, timeliness, uniqueness, and validity, each assessed by rules against defined thresholds.

Completeness metric

The ratio of records or fields populated with non-null, valid values to the total expected, expressed as a percentage compared against an agreed threshold.

Analytics maturity levels

Descriptive analytics explains what happened, diagnostic explains why, predictive forecasts what will happen, and prescriptive recommends actions to take.

Master data management

Discipline that creates and maintains consistent golden records for core entities such as customer and product through consolidation, deduplication, and stewardship.

Semantic layer

A shared definition of metrics, dimensions, and business logic used by reporting tools, preventing the same metric from being computed differently across dashboards.