Organizing and securing a company’s data is a critical task. In fact, most organizations are facing the challenge of managing a large volume of data. A robust data catalog can help organizations to manage their data effectively.
A data catalog is a central inventory of all data assets in an organization. It is a search engine-like user interface that provides a unified view of data assets. It allows users to locate data, as well as to evaluate and understand it. Having an active data catalog can improve team efficiency and unlock the value of data.
Data catalogs can also help compliance officers identify potential security issues and understand the quality of data. Using a data catalog can also help organizations establish a strong trust in their data assets.
Data catalogs have three main types of metadata. These include business, technical and process metadata. In addition, they can also integrate metadata from other databases. Adding metadata to a data catalog can help data professionals to operationalize data.
Business metadata describes the quality of a data set, as well as the reliability of the data. It also includes descriptions of the columns in a data table and the names of the data tables. Technical metadata explains how the data is structured and describes the business logic that computes the columns in the data set. It can also help analysts determine the reliability of a data set.
Data catalogs are also a great way to make sure that only the right people have access to the right data. This is especially important when organizations have an enormous volume of data.
