Data Documentation

The data documentation process of imported models is a critical part of any data catalog. Any imported object (e.g. tables/files, columns/fields) comes with a physical name which needs documentation with at user friendly (logical) name and description which are now better presented and managed in 4 types:

• Local Documentation offers a local documentation with a business name and business description. This can be used as an alternative of the term documentation below, or a mean to supersede an existing term documentation with a better local definition.
• Mapped Documentation (Semantic mapping) is documentation based upon semantic mappings from conceptual or logical data elements (like a glossary term or a data element in a data model).
• Inferred Documentation provides data documentation on any imported object automatically generated from other objects involved in its data flow pass-through lineage and impact, terms associated with data classification and/or semantic relationships. This documentation may also include the results of search in the glossary(ies) in your configuration. This is a powerful feature dramatically increasing the automatic data documentation coverage on many data stores (ODS, data lake, DW) of the Enterprise Architecture.

These different types of documentation sources are presented when one is:

• Editing the documentation in the Overview tab.
• Viewing the List of possible documentation in the Semantic Flow tab.

The data documentation process and presentation is designed to be as efficient as possible in the UI (on any imported object overview tab) with wizards for business documentation and/or term documentation (with term reuse or creation on the fly) suggesting business friendly logical names (from naming standards and supervised learning when enabled) from physical names, and description from inferred documentation.

Documentation, Mapped Documentation and Inferred Documentation attributes are available in the REST API and Metadata Query Language (MQL), and therefore worksheets and dashboards allowing you to create KPI graphical widgets for the data documentation coverage.

Nearly any object in Talend Data Catalog may be documented.