Microsoft MDS Reviews

We use it to maintain our master data sets. We do a lot of setup files and crosswalk files.

We are using SQL Server 2016. It is on-prem till the recent version because SQL Server 2016 is on-prem, but from SQL Server 2019 onwards, it is compatible with Azure. I did a POC last month on the new version to host it up in Azure. We had both public and private clouds.

It has a very good feature called Excel plug-in. You just have to install the plug-in, and then it directly connects to the MDS instance where you can maintain and manage your data and publish it right through Excel. You don't need to go to the front end to make any changes.

It has easy integration with SQL Server, and you can use SSIS to do the ETLs. It is a part of the Microsoft stack. It works with most of the Microsoft stuff.

The only drawback is that it does not have the matching, merging, and all true MDM components. For these, you have to use another competent called Data Quality Services (DQS). You need to plug it in and use it along with MDS for true MDM. Both of these are integrated together, but you have to do them separately, whereas, in Profisee, there are a couple of screens where you can configure the matching process, create matching rules, and other things, and everything is in one product, which is not the case with MDS. 

In order to implement a true MDM, you need MDS, DQS, and SSIS. You have to use MDS to store your golden records, DQS to configure and standardize all your rules and matching percentages, and SSIS to load the data to DQS and MDS. At the same time, you also need Melissa Data to clean up your addresses to validate and standardize the addresses. That's the main component of true MDM. It would be good if they can create a true matching component inside MDS and merge MDS and DQS.

I've been using this solution for the last ten years.

It is stable.

It is pretty good. We initially built only 1 model and 10 entities, but currently, we are maintaining around 20 models and 300 entities.

We have around 50 to 75 people in our organization. They are mostly business analysts and people who are in the data governance team.

Its initial setup is straightforward. It is just like on-prem. It took around one to one and a half hours because we had to spin up the Azure wheel. There are a couple of prerequisites that you need to do that takes around half an hour. After that, it is straightforward.

I did it myself. I also handle its maintenance. I am the main point of contact for any troubleshooting, upgrades, or patches that we need to do.

It has been 200% useful in our organization.

MDS is a part of the SQL Server enterprise license. I am not aware of any additional costs.

I would highly recommend this solution. It is a very good tool. You don't need to implement a true MDM in order to implement MDS. You can automate a digital transformation where you can migrate your Excel and Access databases that are lying in silos to MDS. This way you would have true data governance, security, change tracking (CDC), and security versioning. There are a lot of features that are very beneficial. We'll be staying with MDS.

I would rate Microsoft MDS an eight out of ten.

We use it in our company. 

We use the product for data migration, production, and development. We deliver data sources to our customers using MDS. We are a data company.

The backup and restore functionality are the solution's most valuable aspects.

The Microsoft license cost could be lower.

We are a data company. We have loads of data and we are finding that, while it's working fine, if you're looking for reporting of big data, it has its limits.

We'd like to have a NoSQL solution in Microsoft MDS.

I've used this solution for many years. 

It's stable enough. That's not a problem. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. 

The solution is not very scalable. It's limited in terms of what you can do.

We have ten people working with it in our company.

I don't use technical support via Microsoft that often. We are developers so we can figure things out ourselves as well.

I've worked with Oracle, Redshift from AWS, and Postgres, among others. I used many things, however, that was for my former companies.

The solution is a bit expensive. We pay for it on a yearly basis. 

I'm not sure of the exact costs as I don't handle the payment processes. 

We are looking around to see what we could do with different solutions, such as QuickSight and Babelfish.

Redshift, for example, is NoSQL, so that can actually be very powerful with big data. That's the type of solution we are looking for.

We're a customer and end-user.

We have the solution deployed on-premises and on Amazon Cloud. 

It's Microsoft, so it's not always perfect, however, is a good step to start with. It's easy to start with MDS. You just have to be aware that you will have some issues.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

I'm a distributor and developer of Microsoft MDS. 

The most valuable feature of the solution is Excel because it enables even non-technical people to directly interact with the BI system which is important because most of our people are not from the IT sector. The second important feature is that while we are using Informatica and other SAP tools which are less customizable, MDS increases customization for us and that is very useful. MDS, SQL and SSIS make the solution much more powerful. The main reason we use this solution is because of its customization. 

I have faced data primary violation in MDS when the primary key was full and that is not good. There are occasions when the solution maintains SD and we get duplications of MDS. When I use the SIS package for batch activity and it's full, I have to delete the batch manually by going into the database. The solution can sometimes be slow. We are in a healthcare environment and I've faced some synchronizing issues with the test model. I've faced some issues as a consultant of this solution because of the above. It can be slow sometimes.

I rate the solution six out of 10. 

I've been using this solution for six years. 

There can be some issues with stability depending on how you use the solution. 

We can directly scale everything by coding and we can customize everything. 

It's important to remember that when you're installing the SQL Server, you have to select MDS. Once that's done MDS has to be enabled and the MDS database has to be created. For that purpose, you have to open MDS configuration and create the MDS database. Finally you have to build a few services of Microsoft Windows - Windows 10, Windows Server or something else - to enable multiple services and open multiple ports to enable DevOps MDS service. You then need a Microsoft Silverlight for MDS use. Finally, the MDS developer must have the admin rights of the system as well as the database.

MDS alone is a free product, but it comes with the complete package of Microsoft SQL Server. So while you are purchasing SQL Server Pro version or licensed version of SQL Server you also get SSIS, MDS and DQS. 

The advantage of Microsoft MDS is that it's so handy, so customizable, and easy to use. It has all the basics and given that we are a directly integral system, everyone is able to use Excel. The advantage is that you can be working on bulk data and creating a batch, we can upload or deliver activities. If one system has reached capacity or has stopped, then the whole system stops and it is quite difficult to solve the problem. My advice is that if you want to use custom UI, then make sure you work on Internet Explorer. Without it you can't use a structured MDS UI. In place of Internet Explorer create your own custom UI by the .NET feature.

One of the main features I have found useful is the integration with Azure active directory.

I would like to separate the website from the database side. By default, you have the webserver running on the same server as it is the database. This forces us to make a bigger VM which means more costing for the VM. We tried to go with a less expensive route and every now and then we run out of memory, you have to reboot the machine. It is okay in DEV and QA, but ideally, we should not have this happening.

I do not like using Silverlight and Internet Explorer. The new 2019 version gets rid of that, which is one of the reasons why we are looking to switch.

Additionally, the overall performance could improve.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The solution will work fine stability wise if you have the VM sized appropriately.

If you have the environment then the solution can be scaled.

I have not needed to call technical support but I almost did when I was trying to do a SQL server restore of a production database and converting it into a DEV and QA environment.

I set it up on my own laptop and I did not think it was that difficult. The challenging part is making sure you are matched up with the right version and patch level of SQL Server and IE.

I did the implementation myself and it took me two days because we had multiple versions of the documentation. They were all dated in their own unique ways and because of this, I created a new version of them all, that worked for me. We have three technicians that support the solution in my organization.

I believe my organization has had a return on investment using this solution.

The solution does require a license and we have enterprise licenses.

I rate Microsoft MDS a nine out of ten.

It can be used for all the data cataloging, master data management, manufacturing, product management, data harmonization, data stewardship, for any kind of master data, and product catalog.

It gives you the flexibility to have in-depth experience. It allows you to collect data and save it as a golden record. You have the flexibility for data stewardship.

They also have an Excel API where you can do everything from Excel. You can make changes with the connectivity on the Excel API.

It's very easy to use.

The version that I work with is on-premises and it required an additional virtual machine on the cloud. It would be a better option to have an on-cloud version.

I have been using this solution for three years.

We are using the latest version.

It's very stable. Stability is one of the best features.

It's scalable. It's based on Microsoft SQL Server.

They are using this solution at an enterprise level for our customer who is an implementer. They are going to produce data and scale it.

We contacted technical support with an issue that we were having and they were able to solve it. It was a learning phase but Microsoft provided support.

Microsoft support is good. They are customer-friendly and they are knowledgeable.

We are using SAP for the master data.

SAP is more expensive than Microsoft. It's costly.

SAP is a very good ESP tool that can also be used for master data services.

It's very stable.

I was not a part of the installation. I have not done it, but it should be simple. 

It's similar to any SQL server installation.

Implementing with the cloud was a little bit complex. 

There was an issue with the production version.

In my current organization, I'm recommending reviewing all of the product cataloging master data management. This is what I would recommend for anybody who wants to do master data management, they use this product.

I would rate Microsoft MDS an eight out of ten.

Microsoft MDS is simple to use. Compared to other databases, it is easier to manage and administer.

The program's navigation tools could be improved. The process of changing the database and uninstalling should be easier, perhaps by making some changes in one program without reinstalling everything.

I rate the product stability a nine out of ten. 

I rate the platform's scalability a nine out of ten. 

I don't contact Microsoft directly. We have partners who open cases with support if needed. Sometimes, the technical support team replies promptly, other times it takes longer.

Neutral

The initial setup process is straightforward. However, information available on the internet and from Microsoft is unclear for deployment. 

Product licensing is very complicated. It would be helpful to have an online calculator to estimate the cost of a license.

The system is very efficient for data management. I rate it a nine out of ten. 

I'm using Microsoft MDS for configuring the storage for backups on the DPM server, and data protection manager.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft MDS is its management.

The stability could be improved.

I have been using Microsoft MDS for approximately two years.

Microsoft MDS is stable.

I rate the stability of Microsoft MDS a nine out of ten.

The scalability of Microsoft MDS is good.

We have three administrators using this solution in my company.

It has some disadvantages, in the data protection manager, but this is specifically for our environment. In general, it scales well. 

I have contacted technical support because of our specific environment. It was not the fault of the solution.

The initial setup of Microsoft MDS is simple. After thoroughly planning and gathering all necessary information and instructions, the implementation took one day.

I rate Microsoft MDS a nine out of ten.

We use MDS for analytical and operational enterprise reference data management including management of campaign, product and financial management hierarchies.  We currently only use batch interfaces to feed or get data from it. We also use it to maintain source to enterprise data mappings that are fed to ETL via a generic RDM (Reference Data Management) design. We have a variety of data stewards who use the tool for data management and they get automatically notified via email with a link when new products need hierarchy assignment.

It enables data stewards to directly interact with data on a web site or Excel without building a custom solution. This includes data stewards getting notification emails automatically when new data is loaded including a link to the specific data that needs to be updated. It also has a built-in single level of approval management that is used where versions of data need to be approved prior to publishing. The end result is more consistent data, more consistent data and fewer data silos.

Reference data management is integrated via using standard automated ETL processes extracting from the published database views. This eliminates the need for one-off, silo'd and uncontrolled data management. 

• Ease of use
• Excel interface
• Simplicity
• Soft delete support
• Sophistication of business rules
• Price (FREE for sql server enterprise license)
• Hierarchy management 
• Security integration with AD
• Very fine grained security
• Easy to build (and extendable) business rules
• Automatic Notification
• Versioning
• Integrated boolean business rules
• Change detection
• Integrated workflow
• Staging support
• Publication support
• Ability to propagate from one repository to another
• Ability to share reference data across models
• Integrates as a web part
• Flexibility
• Includes both batch staging process and Excel data loading
• Unused area of hierarchies to easily identify members not assigned

• Product Roadmap - it is unknown how Microsoft will support this tool long term as it now gets very few if any updates when new versions of SqlServer come out.  There is no known plan for Azure PaaS version.
• It "can" have a bug where a model becomes corrupted.  It still operates but will no longer hard delete (purge function stops working) and can no longer migrate the model to another repository as the create or clone functions stop working.  It gives internal FK and duplicate row errors when attempting these functions.  
  
• Another unpredictable bug:  Adding new attribute to entity doesn't show in web interface - only Excel.  Only known solution is to drop the entity and re-create it. Only experienced once so far.
• Business Rules cannot prevent bad data entry!  Business rules cannot be used to prevent bad data from getting entered - it only marks the data as bad after it is saved because rules can only apply to data being saved.  And even then it requires the data steward to push a validate rules button.  If they forget they won't notice (and notifications won't go out) regarding rule violations.  In my 30+ years in IT I've never experienced a tool that only allows you to create reactive rules that identify bad data but never prevent it from getting saved. In a large enterprise I would rule this as a show stopper.
• Bottom line:  Business rules need the ability to prevent data changes, not just validate saved changes
• Second largest shortcoming:  Hierarchy integration views don't support custom attributes. This capability (which would be awesome if it worked right) is completely worthless without supporting custom attributes.
• Explorer GUI is clunky and awkward.
• Tool needs to get more frequent enhancements.  For example, since 2016 there has been no enhancement except replacing Silverlight in the 2019 version.
• It needs the ability to publish only a single business rule. Publishing business rules requires publishing all rules and results in requirement for re-validation of all rules.  Until that is done the validation status on all affected records is in an "awaiting validation" state which can adversely affect data usage and validity.  
• Needs ability to remove menu options that may not be relevant to data stewards such as Entity Dependencies, Collections or Changesets.
  
• Needs ability to default user group's first screen.  For example defaulting to a specific hierarchy display.
• Resolve a bug in the domain based validation business rule feature: the web interface will not allow correcting domain based lookups in the child properties (only works using hierarchy drag/drop or within Excel).
• Hierarchy names should allow exceeding 30 characters.
• Selecting child members within the navigator in a hierarchy results in the GUI just ignoring you... it should allow selecting children in the navigator or at least give an error message. (Note that 2012 version resulted in blank middle panel when this occurred rather than just ignoring you).
• Needs to allow renaming the code and name attributes within the publication views (only allows renaming in the UI).
  
• Derived hierarchy views should optionally include all attributes from all respective levels, not just the code and name attributes.
• Needs to allow setting the CODE attribute datatype as numeric rather than forced datatype of string (which turns into nvarchar(250) behind the scenes). This is a significant headache as simple sorting on the CODE attribute with numbers causes numbers without leading zeros to not sort correctly and it requires adding business rule to enforce numeric datatype.
• Needs to support setting view datatypes to varchar rather than forcing nvarchar so subsequent extracts do not have to do datatype conversion if not using unicode in your target database.
• Versioning lacks granularity as it only supports model-level versioning.
• The deployment migration GUI tool doesn't support data, only meta-data making the GUI export tool fairly useless. (Including data requires use of command line to support data)
• The deployment migration tools do not support business rules requiring manual maintenance when using multiple environments (e.g. dev/sit/prod).
• Excel plug-in needs to support hierarchies.
• Needs to support email notification to more than one email group/user.
• Staging process is non-intuitive and overly complicated.
• Repository should utilize a prefix or unique schema for each model so that entities and views do not have to be uniquely named across models.
• Needs ability to integrate seamlessly with data quality products. (DQS has some level of integration with MDS but the integration is overly complex and DQS's days are likely numbered).
• Notification should work without an AD user first accessing the model. Once you setup the notification for an AD user or group it should just work without every user having to log on at least one time.  
  

We have been using MDS in some capacity for around 10 years going back to 2008R2 version

No issues encountered with stability in terms of up time but one of our models won't send notifications just to specific users which appears to be a bug in the interface between MDS and SqlServer SMTP as MDS logs the notification but SqlServer does not log the email send (success or failure).

There is a bug if you set the CODE or NAME attribute security to read-only for a group that the admin is in, then administration capability disappears for that admin account. This can be reset in the backend repository but is a significant bug. Supposedly it was fixed in CU1 but was not.

Some business rules when attempting to use them cause vague database error that was also supposed to be fixed in SP1 but was not.

Notification stopped working after a couple of years. MDS is sending notification but it no longer communicates with SqlServer smtp even though SqlServer SMTP can be successfully run from other tools such as SqlAgent. It appears to have stopped working after a SqlServer patch.

Our largest entity is a few million rows. It does not seem to scale well for any significant volumes.  I would hesitate to use the backend for CDI/customer purposes unless you have very small customer volumes.  Consider that if you're looking at Profisee Maestro solution since it shares the same backend database design.

Customer Service:

Microsoft was incredible during beta testing but customer services hasn't been needed since much earlier versions that had installation bugs. Documentation online is missing some critical installation nuances such as SqlServer security settings needed in order to deploy models.

Technical Support:

There is a great amount of information available on the web for this product and its relatively simple so direct technical support has been rarely needed once we were off the beta version.

We didn't have a previous solution. Any augmentation of source system data for reporting was done via spreadsheets. 

I find this product far superior to a previously used product which was Hyperion MDM, now Oracle MDM. Although Oracle has enhanced their product in recent years since I last used it it was built upon the dying Hyperion database and had no governance built in and no web interface.  And the Oracle tool is hundreds of thousands verses this tool which is free.  Need I say more?

Note that competing products in the market place are very expensive and will include possibly more sophistication than you need. This tool does everything you will need for simple dimension or reference data management purposes.

It is fairly straightforward as the Excel plug-in makes the initial data load very simple.

We implemented it in-house.

There was no cost for the software as it comes with SQL Server BI, and Enterprise editions. The ROI is terrific and it means you can avoid building or purchasing a solution.

None as our in-house staff did the setup. There is no day to day maintenance needed. The 2016 version is no longer supported by modern browsers so high recommend only using the latest (2019) version available.

No as this was the only no-cost option with level of sophistication we needed.

• It's sweet spot is reference data. Attempting to use it for large scale customer data or products may be problematic.
• The tool is integrated into Dynamics AX but there is not clear direction by Microsoft for improving and supporting the product as a stand alone long term. Use it with that knowledge and look for any indication from Microsoft that it will continue to support it or deprecate it.
• If starting out I would not recommend using any version prior to 2019.