Single Source of Truth

Why is a Single Source of Truth important?

This page describes and visualizes the concept and principle of Single Source of Truth in detail. It presents a definition, a principle formulation, and a principle details diagram.

Definition

What is Single Source of Truth?

Single Source of Truth (SSOT), Single Point of Truth (SPOT), or Source of Truth (SOT) refers to the concept where certain data has only one official source to be used by data consumers (i.e., humans and software) for the true current version of that data.

Single Source of Truth is an information concept.

A Single Source of Truth is about maintaining data consistency and preventing duplicate inconsistencies.

Example

An example of Single source of Truth

For instance, if a company stores the addresses of clients only in one database, when addresses change, there is only one instance of the address to change.

If the company stores the address of the same client in different databases, after a change of address for a certain time, the company may work or use two different addresses to communicate with you.

This could create costs like sending invoices to the wrong address that eventually never get paid, or sending products to the wrong address that are delivered to the right address.

Principle

Principle Statement

By always storing data in exactly one location, it prevents inconsistent versions of that data from being used by data consumers.

Principle Details Diagram

The Principles Details diagram shows that 'Truth #1' is the only Data Source that data consumers may use to read data.

Usage of the Concept

Organizations use the Concept of Single Source of Truth as part of their Information Architecture or Enterprise Architecture. By implementing this concept, data quality improves, communication errors decrease, and error-related costs decline.