Getting Started with Data Catalog

The Data Catalog helps the organization keep track of its data assets organized. A data catalog describes how data connects with the data assets that bring value to the organization. A data catalog enables a company to index, evaluate, and discover data for specific use cases. It is possible when metadata undergoes proper data governance, management, and search command.

The OvalEdge Data Catalog helps you to:

Create one place for all your data
Allows you access to the metadata
Able to view and Understand lineage in the best way
Ensure data consistency
Simplified data governance and data literacy

The workings of a data catalog

OvalEdge Crawler: It connects to various databases and crawls metadata and various statistics.
Human Curation: Users enhance various databases and document their descriptions and usage.
Relationships: OvalEdge establishes various kinds of relationships with other objects like lineage, entity relationships, pattern relationships, references, etc.
OvalEdge Search Tools or Algorithm: OvalEdge uses a proprietary algorithm to provide appropriate results based on various factors.

Data Catalog Interface

In the OvalEdge application, the Data Catalog comprises Databases, Tables, Table Columns, Files, File Columns, Reports, Report Columns, and Queries. The data catalog user window contains separate tabs that include a specific type of data as a repository in each tab.

Databases: A database is a collection of organized and stored information for easy retrieval. The database search provides a list of all the databases and schemas that exist in an organization. Click a specific schema to view the details of the database selected on the results page. See more on Databases
Tables: Tables typically show numerical or textual information in columns and rows. Table search allows performing a local search on all the data tables in each database. It contains various filters that can be used to narrow down your search results. It presents data in a table view. See more on Tables
Table Columns: Column search allows performing a search on individual columns of each table. See more on Table Columns
Files: OvalEdge stores your files in a file system. This search option gives the list of each file and its unique File location. You can select a file or a folder to view its contents. OvalEdge supports file systems such as comma-separated value(.csv), Microsoft Excel (.xlsx), JSON, JSON(deeply nested), Tab and pipe-delimited value, AVRO and Parquet files. See more on Files
File Columns: The Columns used in each file are saved for a quick search on the File column page. See more on File Columns
Reports: Reports are graphic visual representations of data intended to present insights quickly and clearly. OvalEdge has a lightweight in-built visualization application that allows users to build basic reports. It also allows users to crawl and collaborate with visualization tools like Tableau and Power BI and build lineage. A Report view is a single source that lists all the visuals created using OvalEdge or using other visualization tools. A user can make a quick search using a specific report name to understand the lineage of the data used in the visual. All the reports or dashboards can be viewed on the All Reports page. Specific reports can be added to the user's personal space for quick access by subscribing to a selected report. For more information on adding reports to personal space, See How to Personalize Dashboard. Each report and visualization are grouped under a common Reports Group name to give secured access to user roles. See more on Reports
Report Columns: The columns used in each report and dashboard are stored in the report column data catalog page for quick search. See more on Report Columns
Queries: Queries are questions written on a dataset to extract information. Some queries run at repeated intervals. OvalEdge users have an option to save important queries on a dataset and later search the query using Query search. See more on Queries