When you hear the term data catalog, you probably simply think of a list of all the information some particular group has on hand. This simple definition is arguably true, but these documents are normally stored in a very specific format that’s made them take on a sort of life of their own in recent years. As the total amount of information most companies and non-governmental organizations collect continues to spiral out of control, an increasingly large percentage of them are using data catalogs to analyze, visualize and ultimately understand the information that they’re working with.
One of the most important features of a data catalog is its ability to make the prospect of searching through a set simpler. Most groups over a certain size end up with a large amount of information that they’re not quite sure about the origin of. A data catalog gives users a complete list of everything that they have access to and where it originally came from. This makes it easy to locate particular points of data without having to parse an entire list.
Over time, a catalog may end up growing into a single unified data governance platform that provides every single staffer a place to make entries for each record their department keeps. By tagging every record with a set of keywords, employees who work in other departments can find the answers to their queries even if they’re not able to reach a live person in the section that created it. Healthcare and education market shoppers have particularly found this useful since people who work for the groups they represent often need to have access to data quickly.
Perhaps most important to consumers in those sectors is the ability to create a single source of truth that can answer every query an employee could theoretically come up with. Say you needed to know the results of a particular drug trial or a prospective student’s academic background. Without a verified database, you may end up looking through a number of competing records that all show different information. It could be impossible to ascertain what data is accurate in those circumstances. By combining everything into one container, it’s relatively easy to analyze the facts and draw conclusions.
Automatic visualization software is available that leverages the power of data catalogs, which means staffers can get charts and graphs by simply pushing a few digital buttons. If they want to identify trends or see which areas need improvement, then doing so requires nothing more than listing the fields they’re interested in. Some business managers have used these features to generate quick presentations while others have relied on them as a way to figure out which operations aren’t cost effective.
Building a data catalog might ultimately be required in at least some industries as a result of regulatory actions to stay in compliance with industry regulations and policies. That being said, such rules may not mean much because so many companies are deciding that these are the best way to analyze their records and build them on their own already.