Data Management Tools

What is data management (DM) and why is it important? As described in the Handbook of Data Management, data management is the process of understanding the data needs of an organization and making the data available to support the operations of the organization. The ultimate goal of data management is to provide the seamless access and fusion of massive amounts of data, information, and knowledge in a heterogeneous and real-time environment, and to support the functions and decision making processes of an organization. The important questions that need to be asked for proper data management are: who is going to be using the data, what types of data need to be stored, and how will this data be accessed? With these questions answered, the data management system (DMS) can then be created, or an existing system can be modified to meet the needs of the organization.