One set of agreed values, everywhere they are used
Country codes, product hierarchies, cost centres, and controlled vocabularies end up maintained in twenty spreadsheets and six systems, each slightly out of date. TopQuadrant makes them governed assets with owners, effective dates, and a published feed every consuming system reads from.
Trusted to govern the data behind the world's most regulated decisions.
The spreadsheet was never the problem. The lack of an owner was
Reference data is the easiest data to govern and the most commonly ungoverned. It is small, slow-changing, and referenced by everything, which is precisely why a stale value propagates into hundreds of reports before anyone notices. Governing it centrally and publishing it outward is a short project with a long tail of benefit.
Prebuilt connectors, so governed values reach the warehouse, catalog, and operational systems that consume them.
To a first governed domain in production, working from prebuilt vocabularies rather than a blank slate.
One published version of every code list, with effective dates and the full history behind it.
Code lists & hierarchies
Model the structure as well as the values
Most reference data has shape: parent-child hierarchies, groupings, mutually exclusive sets, and relationships to other lists. Model that structure explicitly in SKOS and OWL so downstream systems can roll up, aggregate, and validate against it correctly.
- SKOS-native. Broader, narrower, and related relationships are first-class, not columns in a spreadsheet.
- Polyhierarchy where you need it. A concept can sit in more than one branch without duplicating the record.
- Multilingual labels. Preferred, alternate, and hidden labels per language, governed together.
Crosswalks & mappings
Manage the mappings between standards as assets
The real work is rarely one list. It is the mapping between your internal codes and an external standard, and keeping that mapping correct when either side releases a new version. Mappings are governed, versioned artefacts here, with provenance on every correspondence.
- Version-aware mappings. Each correspondence records which version of each side it was asserted against.
- Mapping provenance. Who asserted it, when, on what basis, and whether it is exact or approximate.
- Drift detection. When an external standard releases, see which of your mappings now point at retired concepts.
Change control & effective dating
Retire a value without breaking history
Reference data changes have to be timed. A new cost centre applies from the start of the quarter, a deprecated product code still has to resolve for historical reporting. Effective dating and deprecation with successors are built into the model rather than bolted on.
- Effective dates. Values carry validity periods, so a query as of last March returns last March’s list.
- Deprecate, don’t delete. Retired concepts stay resolvable with a pointer to what replaced them.
- Approval before publish. Changes reach consumers only after the named approver signs off.
Publication & distribution
Publish once, consume everywhere
Governed values are only useful where they are used. Publish each domain as an API, a SPARQL endpoint, a file drop, or a push into your warehouse and catalog, so every consuming system reads the same list at the same version.
- API and endpoint access. Systems query the governed list directly rather than caching a copy.
- Push to the warehouse. Governed dimensions land in Snowflake, Databricks, or BigQuery on a schedule.
- Catalog sync. Collibra, Informatica, and Alation reflect the same governed definitions your stewards manage.