Data Managers as Search Engine Experts
May 3, 2009
An unhappy quack to the reader who sent me a link to Information Management’s article “When Data Becomes [sic] Metadata” here. Right off the mark, the word “data” is a plural, so the headline contains a subject verb agreement editor. My thought is that the editors at Information Management were rushing to meet a deadline. Okay. The deeper issue in the story attributed to Steve Hoberman was this passage:
Data managers will be relied upon as experts in search engine technology. We will be asked how search engines work and will be held accountable for analyzing and modeling Web 2.0 components such as tags and ontologies. Users will expect similar results and response times as their search engines for all of their reports and queries. Therefore, there will be an increased focus for us on the physical data model to ensure rapid query response time to match search engine response time.
Yikes. I am not sure what a data manager is. I know for certain that there are not too many search “experts” running around who can deploy a system that works, conforms to the requirements, and remains on time and in budget. I can name five people, and I don’t think any one of those individuals would describe himself or herself as a “data manager”.
More troublesome is the leap from competence in data management to expertise in search. Hogwash. The reason organizations are struggling with information retrieval is often rooted in miserable data management methods. The write up means well but is, in my opinion, likely to set the stage for yet another search and content processing train wreck. This time the engineer is not a consultant from a second or third tier advisory firm in New York. The hands on the controls is a person who is a “data architect” or a “business intelligence professional”.
Who next will receive the title of “search expert”? Perhaps the person who sets up a trade show exhibit at a conference that includes vendors of photocopy equipment?
Stephen Arnold, May 3, 2009
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