Source of truth
The one system or dataset agreed to hold the authoritative version of a piece of information. When copies disagree, it is the one that is taken to be right.
It is an agreement between people, and it is often set field by field: one system for addresses, another for account balances. Without it, a disagreement between two systems has no way to be settled.
Where it comes up
- The same entity in two systemsOne person or organization exists in two systems under different identifiers, with nothing linking the records.
- Duplicate keys with conflicting valuesTwo rows share an identifier that should be unique, but disagree on other fields.
See also
- Master dataThe core lists an organization relies on across its systems, such as customers, products, suppliers, and locations.
- Golden recordThe single best version of a customer, product, or other entity, assembled from all the records that describe it.
- ReconciliationComparing two sets of data that should agree, such as a source system and its export, and accounting for every difference between them.