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Stop Mixing Semantic Layer, MDM, Data Catalog and Ontology
Are we defining, mastering, finding, consuming or delivering value?
Part 2 of the series “Stop Mixing Things: Understanding the Layers Beneath AI”. Part 1 untangled CDM, Ontology and Knowledge Graphs.
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Same Workshop, Different Buzzwords
Part 1 ended with a question I’ve been asking in architecture discussions for longer than I’d like to admit: what problem are we really trying to solve? It works surprisingly often. People pause, the whiteboard gets a second look, and somebody quietly erases “knowledge graph” from the box in the middle.
And then, usually within the same hour, the box fills up again. Only this time the words are different. Someone says “we need a single source of truth”. Someone else says “that’s what the data catalog is for”. A third person has just come back from a vendor demo and is convinced the semantic layer will sort everything out, while the person from the data office reminds everyone that MDM has been on the roadmap since 2019. By the end of the session, the box in the middle says “Governed Semantic Master Catalog”, and nobody in the room can tell you what it does.
