Reference Data, Master Data, Common Data - these terms are used, often interchangeably, to describe data sets very similar in nature. We refer to these data sets collectively as Standard Data. This is how we distinguish among the terms:

Reference Data: Analytical or planning-level attributes and entities, typically used more at the corporate and regional levels of the organization, and shared across functional groups or the whole organization.

Master Data: Operational, yet shareable, entities in an organization, such as product, customer, vendor, and employee. These are operational entities, since business activity transactions are executed at this level.

Transactional Data: Single unit transactions such as sales, invoices, and orders that use master data entities such as product and customer. These are inherently temporal and instantaneous.

The illustration below using sample customer and product hierarchies clarifies the distinction.