Overview of InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog

The vast amount of digital information requires organizations to analyze information faster and make timely and well-founded decisions. Information governance is a holistic approach to managing, improving, and leveraging information to increase an organization's confidence in its decisions and operational business processes. IBM® InfoSphere® Information Governance Catalog provides the entry point for an organization to understand and govern its information.

Business analysts and subject matter experts can use InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog to create and manage enterprise vocabulary and information governance practices. Such a system enables them to build a common language between business and information technology. With InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog, designated users can create glossary assets: terms, categories, information governance policies, and information governance rules. In addition, users can define relationships between the glossary assets that they create and other catalog assets.

In addition to glossary assets, the catalog can contain metadata about information assets, which are assets other than glossary assets. Examples of information assets are implemented data resources, such as database tables and columns, ETL jobs, profiling processes, routines, and functions. These information assets typically come from other IBM InfoSphere Information Server components and are stored in the metadata repository of InfoSphere Information Server.

The catalog can also contain metadata about external assets. External assets can include items such as business process models, web services, or reports that are in an external asset management system. InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog helps you to explore and manage all these types of assets by providing reports on data flow, lineage, and the impact of changes to assets. You can discover and analyze relationships between assets in the catalog to better understand and manage the flow of data through the enterprise.

By providing lineage reports and analysis, InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog supports IT professionals who are responsible for compliance and governance initiatives that require lineage information. For example, such initiatives might be Dodd-Frank or Basel II. InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog also supports IT professionals by providing impact analysis that shows the affect of changes to information management environments.

In addition to helping you to understand and govern your information, InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog helps you to understand the change and workflow processes of your assets. IBM Stewardship Center can access asset information and activity in the catalog by using IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog REST API. IBM Stewardship Center sends email notification to specific recipients as soon as a governance event such as creation, modification, import, or workflow change occurs to an asset. The email contains the asset name, the action that occurred, and a link to the Details page of that asset. When an information governance rule is sent for approval, the email contains a link to approve or reject the modified rule.

With InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog, you can perform these tasks:
  • Establish a common business language and manage business perspectives about information and align those views with the IT perspective.
  • Explore assets in the catalog:
    • Explore glossary assets, information assets, and external assets, as well as stewards, and other catalog content
    • Provide simple and advanced search and robust querying
    • Display a graphical view of asset relationships
    • Track the history of changes to terms
  • Enhance existing metadata with descriptions and associations:
    • Associate related assets, stewards, labels, and custom attributes to assets
    • Create extended data sources to add metadata to the catalog that is not generated automatically by InfoSphere Information Server components or that cannot be easily imported from external applications.
  • Analyze dependencies and relationships of key information assets and business intelligence reports:
    • Trace lineage from jobs and databases to business intelligence reports
    • Understand columns, database tables, and other assets
    • Perform lineage analysis to understand where data comes from or goes to by using shared table information, job design information, or operational metadata from job runs
    • Perform impact analysis to understand dependencies and the effects of changes to a column or job
    • Analyze operational metadata from job runs and the success or failure of events
  • Manage the catalog metadata to obtain in-depth analysis reports:
    • Reconcile duplicate assets
    • Map databases to database aliases
    • Access runtime information to enrich reporting
    • Automate the discovery of relationships within and across data sources to accelerate project deployment
    • Run data lineage to create trusted information that supports data governance and compliance efforts
  • Manage the people and processes that govern your assets
    • Define the people responsible for creating, reviewing, and publishing information governance rules
    • Receive email notification of governance events that occur to your glossary and information assets
    • Approve a new or modified information governance rule, or return the rule to Draft status