"I was looking for a simpler tool than a traditional ETL that would allow me to focus on the meaning of the data, their formats, to match data sets easily and would provide flexibility for evolution. In a way, it's a tool for managing data over its entire life cycle. Julien Glauzy, Data Administrator at the Information Systems and Telecommunications Department of the Greater Nancy Metropolis.
To meet the demands of its agents, the Greater Nancy Metropolis is seeking to optimize data sharing. The objective: to have a global view, to know them better, to improve their quality, and to unify the information systems from which they originate in order to gain in efficiency and quality of service.
What were the issues for Grand Nancy?
What are the contributions of Tale of Data? What were the reasons for the choice?
Key points for the Metropole of Greater Nancy
- Improve the quality of reference data - and facilitate sharing with the business lines and applications - to better respond to internal requests; create new services with high added value for the communities that make up the metropolis; - Define a data management framework, with the project managers and business referents, in order to better understand the data, ensure its dissemination, consistency and reliability, such as defining the life cycle of the data to be controlled; the principles of creation, storage, deletion, reliability, etc. - Meet the regulatory requirements of the RGPD and the Metropolitan Security Level for electronic data; - Build an infocenter, with a Big data collection logic, which allows the creation of long-term strategic management indicators.
Presentation of the Metropolis of Greater Nancy
The metropolis is a territory of 256,000 inhabitants composed of 20 municipalities. It is located in the Grand Est region, in the heart of the Lorraine region, and includes the cities and agglomerations of Thionville, Metz, Nancy and Épinal, for a total of 1.4 million inhabitants. The Greater Nancy Metropolis fulfills major missions in connection with strategic axes around economic development; transportation and travel; universities and research; new information and communication technologies; housing and solidarity; territorial development, mobility and the environment; major cultural, sports and leisure facilities.
The challenges of Greater Nancy
The number of different information systems - 20, i.e. 1 per municipality and the independence of these systems - implies having a specific decision-making strategy. All of this while meeting the regulatory requirements in terms of data protection, security and archiving. "I was looking for a simpler tool than a traditional ETL that would allow me to focus on the meaning of the data, their formats, to match data sets easily and would provide flexibility for evolution. In a way, it's a tool for managing data throughout its life cycle. says Julien Glauzy, Data Administrator at the Information Systems and Telecommunications Department of the Greater Nancy Metropolis.
Why did the Metropolis of Greater Nancy choose Tale of Data?
The solution is immediately obvious because of its powerful functionalities and its flexibility, which allow the processing of data for decision-making purposes. "I saw that it was possible to achieve a "quick win" and sometimes respond to very old problems. The tool quickly allows for an exhaustive approach to a set of data from a database or a file.
Exploration and formatting are very fast compared to Excel functions or an ETL. In addition, the approach to data means that we focus fully on the format, meaning and data sets, rather than on the technique, which saves time," explains Julien Glauzy. The software's interface also makes it easy to re-read a data flow, a bit like a book, which makes it easy to find what you have done with the data (transformation, formatting, mixing, etc.). "Here again, I save time and it's easier to share the process and results," says Julien Glauzy. In Tale of Data, the repository logic exists - so it is possible to make join strategies and combinations between numerous repositories, which cannot be done with SQL. Working with a repository logic is called Data Mesh*. This allows you to move from a centralized data infrastructure (data warehouse, data lake) managed by a single team to a distributed data organization (supplier/consumer/repository logic), which is what Grand Nancy does.
What are the benefits?
Tale of Data allows for quick response to requests. "There is a logic - among others - of data provider and consumer, so I have to deliver the requested service while making good use of the data" testifies Julien Glauzy. One of the key benefits of the solution lies in the automation of linking and reconciliation processes. "Rather than having data in the IS and building a data warehouse that corresponds to a single use, we build repositories by theme. When a request comes in, we combine the repositories we need from the ready-made repositories, already formatted. It's faster, it's extremely flexible," says Julien Glauzy. says Julien Glauzy. In addition to specific requests, and thanks to the data that can be taken from different repositories - always ensuring that it is fresh and complies with the RGPD - Julien Glauzy provides the IT Service Center with strategic management indicators to improve the quality of services provided. With Tale of Data we achieve at least 95% connections between data from different repositories, which cannot be done with databases. Thanks to the power of AI, the solution detects, for example, what is a name or not - recognition to within two letters or in full text - but also detects thousands of other data such as addresses, phone numbers, SIREN numbers, ..... Tale of Data lets you see what's in the fields and alerts you to what's not formatted properly. "When you are working with millions of lines, this represents an infinite saving of time," says Julien Glauzy. "In the end, I recommend Tale of Data for data mining, semantics, formatting, data combination, AI. That's what's fabulous, I can't find it anywhere else, in any ETL" concludes Julien Glauzy. * concept proposed by Zhamak Delghani in 2019