What it is for
Most businesses hold their history in places that were never designed to agree with each other: spreadsheets, an older system, exports from a tool someone set up years ago, a data lake that grew over time. Bringing that history into a clean system is where data is most often lost, quietly changed, or exposed.
Refractor is how Siege brings a client’s existing data into the shape its Ontology defines.
What it guarantees
Guarantee | What it means |
|---|---|
Nothing is lost silently | A row that does not fit is never dropped or quietly fixed. It is held back with the reason, for a person to correct and bring in. |
Every row is accounted for and traceable | Every source row can be followed to where it ended up, and every field in the new system can be traced back to the source it came from. |
A person accepts, after a trial | Nothing reaches live data until a named person has reviewed a trial run and accepted it. |
Sensitive fields are masked | Inside Refractor, fields the client marks as sensitive are masked from everyone at Siege, people and agents alike. In the client’s own system, the client’s staff see them as their roles allow. |
Source files are purged | Each client’s source data is walled off from every other client’s. It is purged when the work it was for is accepted, or sooner if the client asks, and in every case within 30 days after the engagement or license ends. |
To check: watch a trial load of the client’s own exported data, open the rows held back and read why, and confirm nothing reached live data before a person accepted it.
Where it fits
The Ontology says what shape the data must have, and Refractor brings the data into that shape. When the Ontology changes, existing data is brought along the same way, with the same guarantees.
Refractor reads exports from any source: spreadsheets, or tables exported from any database or data lake. A client’s first data comes in this way. Reading a client’s databases and data lakes directly, and running inside the client’s own environment, are later capabilities, offered once the client is live.