Understanding metadata – data about data

Metadata is data about the data and is an important governance aspect exposed in data catalogs. The data value use case is around the ability to identify key data assets and assess their economic importance to the organization. Let's examine different aspects of metadata.

Data catalog

A catalog is a tool that houses the metadata and provides the tooling for search and discoverability. This is often confused with data dictionaries, which are just data artifacts and do not necessarily have the associated tooling to facilitate data search and retrieval.

There are several vendors in this space and some of the popular ones include Collibra, Alation, and Glue. The data discovery use case is probably the most valuable as it helps users (data engineers, data analysts, and data scientists) search, find, and understand data.

Data governance is another important capability, where data lineage is documented in a central place and...