A data catalog is an essential part of any enterprise data management strategy. With the right data catalog, an organization can manage and preserve enterprise data across all systems, including BI, analytics, and business intelligence (BI) applications. It can help organizations get control of their data, avoid polluting data lakes, and create a collaborative data environment while meeting privacy regulations. The Talend Data Fabric is a complete, end-to-end unified platform for managing all enterprise data.
Metadata includes business knowledge. For example, business metadata could include product descriptions, comments, annotations, and classifications. Operational metadata, on the other hand, could include when an object was last refreshed, which ETL job created it, or how many times a table has been accessed. The use case for such metadata is obvious. It helps make the right choices when building a data catalog. But there are other benefits of data catalogs that go beyond data management (more information).
Erwin software was first developed in 1983 for data modeling. It has since been acquired by Quest Software. It now supports additional capabilities, including a data catalog tool, which helps users navigate data assets across systems. It also has a data-management console, which supports granular controls for data privacy and security. The software also integrates with BI platforms, providing a unified view of the enterprise data landscape. Further, Erwin provides a full range of data management tools, such as metadata harvesting and integration, including automated data curation.
