Data catalog tools help users search, discover, understand and trust data assets in an organization. They also help accelerate digital transformation and governance, reduce time to insight by 60X and democratize data access across teams and stakeholders.
The core functionality of a data catalog is to systematically and automatically collect metadata from all systems in an organization and store it in one unified location. This includes information about where the data is stored, its size and content type (more informations). It also provides related attributes like labels, tags or identifiers that can be used to better understand the purpose of the data.
Business glossaries are an important feature for a data catalog tool because they allow users to map internal definitions of business terms and concepts, such as customer or vendor, to data assets listed in the data catalog. This helps end users explain what data means to them and decreases the number of questions and back-and-forth communications that occur in the context of data.
Data lineage functions are another key component of a data catalog. These provide historical details about data such as where it was created and how it flows through IT systems to be transformed for different uses.
Metadata management is an important component of a data catalog tool because it allows users to add additional descriptive information about each data set such as data sources, tags, identifiers or comments that can aid in understanding the purpose of the data. This information can include who is responsible for that particular data set or any other relevant information that might be helpful to other data consumers.
