Monday 18 September 2017

Master Data Services Model Cloning

Yes! My company uses Master Data Services or MDS. Yes! It's a pain. And yes! I needed to learn how to use and administer it. For anyone that hasn't had this well meant tool forced upon on them, it feels ... (if I'm being kind) ... a little unfinished.

Based on my experience MDS administration requires an awkward mix of command line tools, the MDS web interface, and even some sql scripts and stored procs executed directly on the database. There are a few strange quirks, like the fact that individual users or groups can be set as administrators, but there is a single super-user. This super-user can only be an individual and not an AD group (although I'll be happy to be proved wrong on this!). Users in the System Administration role can deploy models, but still need to be given permissions to view and edit those models by the super-user (this has changed in SQL 2016 - multiple super-users are supported as well as AD groups are now supported as super-users).