{
  "id": "COMP-MDM-001",
  "slug": "mdm",
  "status": "Informative Comparison",
  "subject": "OCOM",
  "target": "Master Data Management",
  "targetShort": "MDM",
  "summary": "Master Data Management is the discipline and tooling for authoritative master data: golden records, identity resolution, data quality, and stewardship for customers, products, suppliers, and locations. OCOM is a governed description of operating reality, objects with identity, ownership, lifecycle, and evidence, including what MDM typically does not model as master data: decisions, contracts, policies, and the reasons behind a current state. MDM governs the master data about things; a model built with OCOM governs the operating record of what is true about them, why, and who answers for it.",
  "scope": {
    "compared": [
      "Whether each governs master data values or the full operating record around them",
      "How each treats decisions, contracts, and policy as first-class objects",
      "Where identity resolution lives and how OCOM builds on it"
    ],
    "notCompared": [
      "Specific MDM tooling or platforms",
      "Data quality, matching, and deduplication algorithms",
      "MDM governance operating models (steward councils, DAMA-DMBOK practice)"
    ]
  },
  "mappings": [
    {
      "ocom": "Identity",
      "target": "Golden Record",
      "equivalent": "Partial"
    },
    {
      "ocom": "Object",
      "target": "Master Data Entity",
      "equivalent": "Partial"
    },
    {
      "ocom": "Ownership",
      "target": "Data Steward",
      "equivalent": "Partial"
    },
    {
      "ocom": "Registry",
      "target": "System of Record",
      "equivalent": "Partial"
    },
    {
      "ocom": "Contract",
      "target": "—",
      "equivalent": "None"
    }
  ],
  "differences": [
    {
      "aspect": "Centre of gravity",
      "ocom": "Object-centric: the operating record of what is true and why",
      "target": "Data-centric: the golden record of what a value is"
    },
    {
      "aspect": "Time",
      "ocom": "Object state and evidence over the whole lifecycle",
      "target": "Golden value with a change history, not a governed lifecycle"
    },
    {
      "aspect": "Governance",
      "ocom": "First-class: ownership, policy, constraint, decisions",
      "target": "Data stewardship and quality rules, not operational accountability"
    },
    {
      "aspect": "Scope",
      "ocom": "Spans everything the organization must account for",
      "target": "Bounded to master data domains (customer, product, supplier, location)"
    }
  ],
  "capabilities": [
    {
      "capability": "Golden record resolution",
      "ocom": "Partial",
      "target": "Covered"
    },
    {
      "capability": "Object identity",
      "ocom": "Covered",
      "target": "Partial"
    },
    {
      "capability": "Lifecycle",
      "ocom": "Covered",
      "target": "Partial"
    },
    {
      "capability": "Governance",
      "ocom": "Partial",
      "target": "Partial"
    },
    {
      "capability": "Ownership",
      "ocom": "Covered",
      "target": "Partial"
    },
    {
      "capability": "Evidence",
      "ocom": "Partial",
      "target": "Out of scope"
    },
    {
      "capability": "AI retrieval",
      "ocom": "Partial",
      "target": "Out of scope"
    }
  ],
  "interoperability": [
    "MDM is a natural provider inside an OCOM model: the source of identity resolution and golden attribute values for entity objects.",
    "OCOM wraps those values with lifecycle, evidence, policy, and the promotion rules that decide what enters the record. The two are complementary rather than competing: an MDM golden record may serve as the Identity source for an OCOM Object, MDM concepts fall inside Identity and Registry, and Contract, Policy and Evidence lie outside what MDM sets out to describe."
  ],
  "references": [
    {
      "label": "OCOM Identity",
      "url": "/vocabulary/identity"
    },
    {
      "label": "OCOM Ownership",
      "url": "/vocabulary/ownership"
    },
    {
      "label": "OCOM Registry",
      "url": "/vocabulary/registry"
    },
    {
      "label": "DAMA-DMBOK: Data Management Body of Knowledge",
      "url": null
    }
  ],
  "canonical": "https://ocom.uno/comparisons/mdm",
  "url": "https://ocom.uno/comparisons/mdm",
  "coverageScale": [
    "Covered",
    "Partial",
    "Out of scope"
  ],
  "coverageNote": "Covered: the model defines the concept explicitly. Partial: the concept appears indirectly or by convention. Out of scope: the model does not set out to describe it; a boundary, not a deficiency. Three OCOM cells read Partial rather than Covered because the specification's own register records the gap: Evidence (AO-021), Governance (AO-023) and AI retrieval (AO-048). Workflow and Event are defined normatively at the Models tier without a Core Vocabulary term record."
}