A Data Catalog is a tool for registering all the company’s data assets and the related entities.

The metadata that represent them are organized so that you can easily find where the data reside, understand their semantics and evaluate their quality. They also ensure easy and controlled access for all stakeholders, both IT and business users. Any of them, in their own language, can obtain a relevant data set via Data Catalog. Moreover, the user can understand their meaning and identify the relationships with other data to sustain the enterprise value.

Data represents more and more an enabling factor for business strategies. However, often poor data knowledge and their unavailability prevents users from taking full advantage of their value. A Data Catalog is meant to fill this gap.

How does it work?

To meet the said aims, a Data Catalog must have the following features:

• ability to make business data available in an assisted and controlled way;
• possibility to connect to most varied data sources to determine specific characteristics and organize them in a structured metadata model;
• automation functionality, including AI & ML logics based. It should suggest connections, facilitate retrieving necessary data, make its use and search more efficient and effective, improve design and execution of data quality controls and Data Pipeline management;
• support Data Lineage and Impact Analysis techniques. It should manage both business (data streams between processes) and technical lineage (data streams between IT systems), as well as vertical lineage (identify IT data assets that correspond to business data). Besides, the user should be able to see any action’s impact on the entities represented in the metadata model;
• data-intensive processes workflow management. A Data Catalog overcomes organizational silos and orchestrates both automatic and human tasks;
• Data Governance and privacy management. The company’s policies and standards on data management processes, data protection rules and related roles are thus translated into concrete tasks.

Irion EDM: the platform for Data Catalogs and more.

Irion EDM is a completely metadata driven Enterprise Data Management system.

Irion EDM makes it possible to configure a Data Catalog based on a company’s specific characteristics. We offer the most advanced technology to support the needs of data analysts, data engineers, data scientists, data stewards or data consumers (regardless of their technical background). They will be able to easily identify a relevant data set and understand their meaning and their business value. Such data governance and data management are truly useful and meet the future expectations.

Want to learn more?

Contact us! We will provide you with illustrative examples of how other organizations have already started their transformation.