Why Data Catalog is important for the organization?

Jatin Solanki
CodeX
Published in
5 min readFeb 23, 2023

Transparency and Data Discovery helps to reduce firefighting between Business and Data Team.

Photo by Robert Anasch on Unsplash

Disclaimer: This article has some bit of self-promotion.

Data is one of the most valuable resources a company can have, second to their employees, of course. With the abundance of data being produced, it can be challenging for data engineers and data scientists to leverage the full potential of their data. This is where data catalogs come in, serving as a powerful tool to make data more perceptible, findable, and operative. In this blog, we’ll inspect the evolution of data catalogs and help you make a choice that is best for your business. So let’s get into it.

What is a data catalog?

A data catalog is like an inventory of all data assets in an organization, including datasets, metadata, and data lineage. It provides context for the data and helps users comprehend the data at hand and where it comes from. Think of the data catalog as your personal librarian for your data, organizing and categorizing your data sets, making it easier to find and use. Data catalogs are a great single source of truth for all your organization’s data assets. With this, you can quickly and easily search the data you need, whether it’s for BI, analytics, or any other use case.

Benefits of using a data catalog:

Data catalogs offer several key benefits to organizations. They provide greater visibility and control over data assets, allowing organizations to better manage and leverage their data. They also facilitate collaboration between different teams and departments, helping to break down silos and promote knowledge sharing.

Another important aspect of a data catalog is its role in data governance. Data catalogs help organizations ensure that they comply with data privacy and security regulations, by providing a clear view of data lineage and provenance. They also help organizations manage data quality by providing a clear understanding of data definitions, validation rules, and metadata.

Which data catalog should I choose?

Over the years, data catalogs have undergone significant changes, and we can broadly categorize them into three generations:

Data Catalog 0.0: No dedicated tool

Some companies may deal with minimal amounts of data and do not require a dedicated data cataloging tool. In this case, you can use any tool to describe columns and tables in your data infrastructure.

Shortcomings:

  • How Much Ever quick and easy to set up, it is not scalable or easy to maintain and is definitely cumbersome. Imagine running through excel sheets just to find the co-related data set.

Data Catalog 1: Software that syncs with your data warehouse and provides basic information about data assets, such as the data owner, data location, and data format.

First-generation data catalogs focused primarily on data searchability and metadata management. These were simple tools that allowed users to search and locate data assets across the organization. The first-generation data catalog was primarily focused on indexing and cataloging data assets. It was typically designed as a central repository of metadata, where users could search and discover data assets by metadata attributes such as name, description, owner, and tags.

Shortcomings:

  • Simple and straightforward, but they lacked the ability to provide contextual information about data assets, which often led to misunderstandings or incorrect use of data.
  • These catalogs were mostly manual and required human intervention to populate metadata about data assets.
  • They were limited in their ability to provide insights into data quality, data lineage, and data relationships.
  • Moreover, first-generation data catalogs were often disconnected from the actual data storage systems, which led to inconsistencies in metadata.

However, as the amount of data in organizations grew, the limitations of first-generation data catalogs became evident.

Data Catalog 2.0: Software designed for data stewards to maintain data documentation, treatments, lineage, personal information mapping, ownership, and more.

Second-generation data catalogs are more advanced and offer a broader set of features. They go beyond the simple indexing and cataloging of data assets and provide more contextual information, such as data lineage, data quality, and data usage. Data catalogs 2.0 leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to analyze and understand the relationships between data assets, providing more intelligent recommendations and insights to users.

Data catalog 2.0 provide a more comprehensive view of data assets, including structured and unstructured data, such as text and images. This capability allows users to search, discover, and analyze all data assets in an organization cohesively, leading to a better understanding of data and more informed decision-making.

Another critical feature of data catalogs 2.0 is its ability to integrate with other data management tools, such as data integration, data preparation, and data governance tools. This integration provides a complete data management solution, allowing users to access, understand, and manage data assets across the entire data lifecycle.

Data Catalog 3.0: Business Value-Driven Catalogs

The advancement of data catalogs has brought us to the third generation, which has brought about a significant shift in the way we manage data. Data catalogs 3.0 offer a more efficient way of data management and has become an essential tool for businesses to derive value from their data.

One of the leading brands in the third-generation data catalog space is Decube, which has made a name for itself by providing cutting-edge data catalog solutions. Being the only player offering data observability along with a data catalog, users can easily find the data they need, understand the context in which it was created, and determine its quality or health.

The third-generation data catalogs, including Decube’s offering, enable data catalogs to learn from data usage patterns, user feedback, and data profiling to suggest relevant datasets and relationships automatically. Another feature of Decube’s data catalog is the ability to automate data lineage and traceability, which is essential for compliance and regulatory purposes. The platform automatically tracks the origins and transformations of data, allowing users to understand how data flows through their systems.

Moreover, Decube’s data catalog can be integrated with other data management tools, enabling users to manage data from a centralized location. It provides a single interface for managing data across multiple systems, including databases, data lakes, and data warehouses.

Leverage the power of the data catalog:

Choosing the right data catalog tool can be a challenging task. Still, by understanding the different types of data catalog tools available and their features, you can make an informed decision. Whether you’re a small organization with minimal data management needs or a large enterprise with vast amounts of data, there’s a data catalog tool out there that’s right for you. Empower your business with the valuable insights hidden in your data by leveraging a data catalog to its fullest potential.

If you’re looking for a data catalog solution that can help you harness the full potential of your data, Decube is definitely worth checking out! here

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Jatin Solanki
Jatin Solanki

Written by Jatin Solanki

Founder — decube.io | Reliability and Governance for Data and AI Products #dataobservability #datacatalog #dataengineering

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