data held by an organization that describes the entities that are both independent and fundamental for that organization, and that it needs to reference in order to perform its transactions
NOTE 1 Master data typically includes records that describe customers, products, employees, materials, suppliers, services, shareholders, facilities, equipment, and rules and regulations.
NOTE 2 The determination of what is considered master data depends on the viewpoint of the organization.
NOTE 3 The term "entity" is used in the general sense, not as used in information modelling.
EXAMPLE A credit card transaction is related to two entities that are represented by master data. The first is the issuing bank’s credit card account that is identified by the credit card number, where the master data contains information required by the issuing bank about that specific account. The second is the accepting bank’s merchant account that is identified by the merchant number, where the master data contains information required by the accepting bank about that specific merchant.
message used to exchange master data between organizations
NOTE There are many forms that a message can take. Some examples are:
Web Services call (master data consisting of XML data in a SOAP envelope);
e-mail message (master data consisting of an XML file attached to the e-mail);
Java remote method invocation call (master data consisting of Java objects serialized according to the Java RMI specification);
ODBC call (master data consisting of an update statement encoded according to the ODBC specification);
file of master data contained on a compact diskette delivered to an organization by a person (master data consisting of a spreadsheet).