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A Daily Lexicon of Trustworthy Data

005·42

data catalog

/ˈdeɪ.tə ˈkæt.ə.lɒɡ/ - n.

1 [colloq.] A complete index of assets nobody has agreed are correct.Keep. Punchy.This is the problem.

Working definition

2. A searchable inventory of an organization's data assets, enriched with descriptions, ownership, lineage, and usage to aid discovery and trust.

Evidence

Seen in the wild · 3

The Company That Sells the Single Source Becomes a Row in Someone Else'sPlatform Tunnel Vision
Article 10 Quietly Bills You for the Data Catalog Nobody FundedProcess Debt
We Bought Active Metadata to Avoid Deciding Who Owns the DataShiny Object Pursuit

See also

data marketplaceA storefront stocked with products that have no buyers and a returns desk no one staffs.
data swampTerm struck pending the definitions of quality, ownership, catalog, and lineage it was supposed to replace.
metadata layerWhere the ownership field is required and the ownership is not.
single source of truthTerm struck pending the definitions of ownership, metric, and certification it depends on; without them the source is single but the truth is plural.