A system of record is a type of application system that
maintains data and is considered by the business to be the official source of
information in the
organization. For example, a Human Resources application system would
normally be the "system of
record" for all employee data. When an employee is hired or fired,
the data in the HR system constitutes the official record of employment.
Many other systems in the business, however, also require
information about employees. An application system that tracks
product sales, for example, might require names and IDs of employees for
tracking
track product sales. This HR data could be accessed in three different ways:
-
The sales staff data could be maintained
redundantly in the Product Sales application
-
The Product Sales application could read the
employee data from the HR database
-
The employee data could be copied from the HR
database into the Product Sales database
Regardless of the approach adopted, the HR database
must remain the system of record for employee data, including data about the
sales staff. It is not normally a good idea to maintain the same data in
multiple databases. This practice inevitably results in inconsistent data
as time passes.
Most operational systems provide a “system of record”
role for some corporate data. They also make use of data that is maintained
in other systems of record.
