A data catalog can be a great resource for your business. A key component of modern metadata management, it can make many workflows and business processes clearer, facilitate cross-departmental collaboration, and improve productivity in several key ways.
Gretchen Burnham and Becky Lyons First San Francisco Partners recently sat down with DATAVERSITY® to discuss some of the big issues in data catalog adoption and development.
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What is a data catalog?
The Data Catalog is a comprehensive directory listing that describes all available enterprise data assets that a company uses across its organizational chart. Lyons likened it to an old library card catalog. All information in the data catalog indicates the location and content of various data resources. “The heart of the data catalog is the inventory,” she said.
Burnham warns that organizations should regularly edit the content of their data catalogs to avoid simply “collecting, collecting, collecting.” The value of a catalog lies in its usage, not its collection. “It has to serve what the organization is trying to achieve.”
According to Burnham, a data catalog is essentially the same as a metadata repository, but the term “data catalog” seems more familiar to a less technical audience. Like a data catalog, a metadata repository stores metadata that is easily accessible to anyone in your company.
Advantages of using a data catalog
Properly Implementation and optimization, data catalogs help people find valuable data within an organization. “This is how we get data to the people who use it every day.”
Similarly, Burnham emphasized the importance of facilitating alignment as a key benefit of catalogs. “Different people work with an organization’s data every day,” she says. A data catalog keeps everyone on the same page about all the data and how it relates to business goals and problems.
A data catalog can increase visibility and resolve redundancies. You can also solve problems for business her analysts. Both Lyons and Burnham recommend getting a real understanding of what your organization needs, and considering your company’s pain points and how to solve them, before proceeding with catalog implementation.
Does Your Organization Need a Data Catalog?
According to Lyons, companies may start showing clear signs or “symptoms” of needing a data catalog. For example, if a business spends his meetings discussing what data means or “whose numbers are right” rather than making decisions, that’s one clue he can help with a data catalog.
Lyons and Burnham pointed to other scenarios that demonstrate how companies can benefit from data catalogs. When many of your employees are approaching retirement age (or employee turnover is high), you risk losing valuable business knowledge. Or if you’re looking at self-service analytics for business users and stakeholders. A data catalog is also essential for mergers and acquisitions.
“You are bringing together two very different organizations, cultures, understandings, applications, data, etc. Everything is very different,” says Lyons. “Data catalogs are a great way to understand the current state and create the future state.”
Data catalog type
Once you’ve decided that your organization needs to adopt a data catalog, you need to decide which type of catalog best fits your needs. Companies that adopt a highly collaborative approach will benefit more from “a wiki-style open catalog meant for everyone to contribute,” Burnham said. In contrast, more traditional, tightly controlled companies may want to incorporate more curation and approval processes.
Talk to your database administrator (DBA) and data architecture team about your company’s current technology stack and where it’s headed so you can easily scale your catalog efforts in the future. Different tools may connect to your environment better than others and offer different levels of governance support and automation.
Next, consider who will be using the Data Catalog and how their skill set will affect the user experience. For example, less tech-savvy employees may want a user interface that is better suited to holding the user’s hand.
“More and more business analysts (not even developers) want to use data catalogs,” says Burnham. “And the user has a very different level of comfort with the interface than someone who knows how to write SQL for a living.”
Finally, how do these employees use the metadata in the data catalog? Do they use it to write reports? Manage databases? Solve the problem? “Be specific,” Barnum advised. “Have a common list to present to all vendors so they can see the differences between the various products.” helps to bring down
How to get business buy-in
Lyons and Burnham agreed that simplicity is the key to getting buy-in. Explain the benefits and use cases so that decision makers can understand. For example, speak the language of your stakeholders when discussing the benefits of metadata.
“You might be tempted to say that metadata is ‘data about data.’ Technically that’s true, but stakeholders won’t understand,” Burnham said. “So say something about how metadata is useful context about your organization’s data. ‘Data about data’ is a fun catchphrase, but if your audience isn’t already data people, it doesn’t say enough.” you can’t. ”
Lyons suggested using analogies that resonate with decision makers. For younger viewers, she likes to compare the data catalog to her Spotify playlists. This kind of explanation helps promote buy-in and get everyone excited.
make connections
Using another analogy, Burnham sees the data catalog as a bridge between people and data.
“Data catalogs allow companies to talk about their data, how it is used, how it is thought of, where it is located, how it is structured, and more technical aspects, and how they It is a way of connecting
With executive support and careful planning, data catalogs can provide organizations with the tools they need to make those connections and use their business-critical information. In short, it organizes data assets, enhances communication around data, and helps everyone get the most value out of their data. Organization data.
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