What is a single source of truth (SSOT)?

The classic organisational pain is 'whose number is right?', when sales, finance and the exec deck each show a different revenue figure because each pulled it differently. A single source of truth fixes this by establishing one authoritative definition and value that everyone uses.

Achieving SSOT usually involves:

• Agreed definitions one formula per metric.
• A governed store or model that everyone queries.
• Consistency the same logic applied everywhere.

SSOT is as much about shared definitions as about a single database.

iDBQuery supports a single source of truth in a practical way. Its semantic layer lets you define what your key terms and metrics mean once, so every plain-language question resolves them consistently, no more three definitions of 'active customer'. Because it queries your live sources directly and can federate across them, people ask the same system and get the same, consistently computed answer. And crucially, every figure is cited back to the exact source rows, so 'the truth' is not just asserted, it is auditable: anyone can trace a number to its origin. That combination of shared definitions plus row-level provenance is how iDBQuery keeps everyone on the same numbers.