Data Catalog Overview Guide

Using Data Catalog, you can create terms that define data across your organization. You can also create glossaries to organize further and manage your organization's terms.

Terms, or business terms, are the vocabulary used to describe or define the data that exists throughout your organization. Terms include data elements, business terms, KPIs, metrics, and acronyms.

Terms are especially important to establishing a common understanding of the data and technical metadata within your organization, which is often unstandardized or unstructured. The meaning that terms give your data allows your organization to more clearly understand what data it possesses so that it can evaluate and implement necessary data management practices.

Glossaries are groupings of terms relevant to a specific business unit or division, such as HR or Sales. Glossaries allow you to organize business terms from across your organization into relevant subsections corresponding to the business unit to which the terms apply.

View the following articles to get started:

• Creating & Managing Terms in Catalog Glossaries

• Managing Glossaries in the Data Catalog

Data assets help you identify the sources of your data and the location of data within those source systems.

Data assets are the physical and technical systems or objects your organization uses to store or process data. Data assets include data sources themselves, as well as their child objects—the objects nested within them—which can range from an entire database to a single column or row, depending on your organization's governance needs.

The hierarchical structure created between a data source and its child objects helps you understand how your data and associated metadata are structured within the source system. These hierarchies/structures create what is known as the data dictionary.

Additionally, once your data sources and child objects are configured, you can relate terms from your business glossaries to your data assets to define the specific data these assets contain. You can assign these terms manually or by approving recommended terms, which are identified using Data Discovery.

View the following articles to get started:

• Configuring Data Assets

• Assigning Tags and Terms in the Data Catalog

• Reviewing and Approving Recommended Terms

You can create tags and assign them to terms and data assets to further define and contextualize the data your terms and assets represent and contain.

Tags help describe and classify the data present across your data glossaries and data dictionary. These tags are used to help users understand the specific nature of your organization's data and how it can be most effectively handled. Tags include classification, category, individual type, and business domain.

You can also configure your data assets to inherit tags from the terms assigned to the asset automatically. Tag inheritance streamlines the tag assignment process and ensures consistency across your data catalog and data dictionary.

View the following articles to get started:

• Creating & Managing Tags in Catalog Glossaries

• Assigning Tags and Terms in the Data Catalog

• Inheriting Tags in Data Catalog

To quickly navigate your organization's data, you can search your data catalog and data dictionary for terms, classification tags, data assets, and data asset details.

You can apply filters to your catalog searches to narrow the scope of your search results and more quickly locate important items.

You can also save your searches to streamline locating catalog items and keep track of searches that are most relevant to your data governance practices.

View the following articles to get started:

• Searching the Catalog