Data Catalogs

Teams cannot use data they cannot find, so the catalog is the shelf that names what exists. This page is what a data catalog is, then the tools that implement one.

The same notes are in Data Fabric and Data lineage vendors.

Tools

The catalog idea becomes concrete in a product. Alation presents itself as the Alation Intelligence Operating System, which it says global enterprises trust to get their AI right and keep it right. Its own definition of the catalog is the one this page works from:

A data catalog is a collection of metadata, combined with data management and search tools, that helps analysts and other data users to find the data that they need, serves as an inventory of available data, and provides information to evaluate fitness of data for intended uses.