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Vol. I · No. 251
Mon · 8 Jun
A Daily Lexicon of Trustworthy Data
The Lexicon

006·31

reference data

/ˈrɛf.ər.əns ˈdeɪ.tə/ - n.

1 [colloq.] The list of approved values, maintained in a spreadsheet, owned by an analyst who left in 2019.Keep. Punchy.This is the problem.

Working definition

2. Standardized sets of permissible values — country codes, currencies, status codes — used to classify and constrain other data.

Filed
See also
  • controlled vocabularyThe aspiration; the practice is mostly the uncontrolled kind, which is why this exists.
  • master dataThe handful of nouns the entire company depends on and no single function will admit it owns.
  • taxonomyA tree of categories the steering committee approved in March and routed around by April.