Data Glossary

Data glossary is a collection of business terms and rules. Business users will define these terms for example "Conversion Rate", they will define what that means to business and how it is used. What format this rate will be represented in, does this rate depend on other terms and what rules/transformations need to be applied etc.
Following are key pillars of standardization process: Business Users/Owners - They are the main users of the data, they would define business terms, rules in simple language, review/approve steward's work and explore data. Data Governance - Data governance officer/team lays out the foundation of the process, setup governing councils, define data domains, assign data stewards etc. Data Stewards - Works with business users in defining data elements, implementing and connecting technical metadata with business terms and rules.

Glossaries

Business will define many glossaries for example:

  • Finance Glossary - dealing with all finance operations terms like gross revenue etc.
  • Customer Glossary - related to customer centric terms like customer address etc.
  • Marketing Glossary - related to marketing terms like conversion rate etc.

Business Terms

Each data glossary will contain business terms. These terms will define following:


  • Basic Details - name, data types, formats, precisions, descriptions, dependent/related terms.
  • Ownership - Business users, owners, stakeholders etc.

Metadata Linkage

Data stewards will connect the metadata and alias terms with glossary terms. This will link real data from different locations to business terms.

Business Term to Source Lineage

Once metadata from different sources is linked to glossary terms, business users can then see complete lineage and see from where the data is coming from.

Business Agent

These agents allow administrators to perform various tasks like queries, running tasks, workflows, models etc.These agents allow business users to gather intelligence from data or documents using business level natural English language.