Manage business glossaries on Data Catalog

This document describes how to create and use business glossary content in Knowledge Catalog (formerly Dataplex Universal Catalog) with Data Catalog.

Business glossary provides a single place to maintain and manage business-related terminology and definitions across the organization. It lets you attach terms to the columns of cataloged data entries.

You can use Knowledge Catalog business glossary to do the following:

  • Create and maintain business glossaries, categories and terms.
  • Use categories to represent hierarchical structures of categories and terms.
  • Establish relationships between terms as synonyms or related terms.
  • Attach terms to data entry columns.
  • Browse and filter terms within business glossary.
  • Display related terms and data entries for a given term.
  • Search for data entries tagged by a particular term.
  • Display related terms for a given data entry.

Terminology

This section describes the terminology used in this document.

Business glossary

Business glossary is a repository that provides appropriate vocabularies, and governs the business terms of an enterprise, along with the associated term definitions and relationships between the terms. It provides a single place to maintain and manage business terms and their definitions. A business glossary has the following property displayed in the console:

  • Overview: a free-form rich-text description of business glossary purpose and content.

Category

A category is defined within a business glossary. It lets you organize and structure various categories and terms. You can nest categories up to three levels. The following are the properties of a category:

  • Category: a relationship used to establish the container of the current category, if any.
  • Description: a free-form rich text business definition of the category.
  • Data Steward: specifies the person responsible for maintaining the category. This is a descriptive property and it doesn't affect the permissions on the category.

Term

A term is defined within a business glossary either in the glossary directly or within any category found in the glossary. It describes a concept used in a particular branch of business within an enterprise. A term has the following properties displayed in the console:

  • Category: a relationship used to establish the container of the current term, if any.
  • Description: a free-form rich text business definition of the term.
  • Data Steward: specifies the person responsible for maintaining the term. This is a descriptive property and it doesn't affect the permissions on the term.

You can attach terms to the columns of a data entry to indicate that the columns are described by those terms.

Synonym

A synonym is a relationship used to indicate semantic similarity or equivalence between two different terms. It is used when two similar terms are defined by different teams in different glossaries. For example, earnings and income.

A related term is a relationship used to indicate that two terms are semantically related, yet different. For example, profit and income.

Limitations

  • The bulk import of terms into a business glossary isn't supported.
  • The business glossary feature is only supported in the Google Cloud console.
  • When you search for data entries on the Knowledge Catalog Search page, the search result includes data entries where one of their attached terms matches the term used for search. However, reference to the matched term isn't displayed in the search result.
  • BigQuery Omni regions aren't supported. You can't create business glossary content or attach terms to data entries in these regions.
  • When using business glossary on Data Catalog, you can't attach business glossary terms to the columns of Knowledge Catalog entries.

Required roles and permissions

To get the permissions that you need to create and manage glossaries, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on the project:

  • Full access to glossaries, categories, and terms: DataCatalog Glossary Owner (roles/datacatalog.glossaryOwner)
  • Read glossaries, categories, and terms, create attachments between terms, and create attachments between terms and data entries: DataCatalog Glossary User (roles/datacatalog.glossaryUser)
  • Read-only access to glossaries, categories, and terms: DataCatalog Entry Viewer (roles/datacatalog.entryViewer)

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

These predefined roles contain the permissions required to create and manage glossaries. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to create and manage glossaries:

  • Full access to glossaries, categories, and terms:
    • datacatalog.entries.*
    • datacatalog.relationships.*
  • Read glossaries, categories, and terms, create attachments between terms, and create attachments between terms and data entries:
    • datacatalog.entries.get
    • datacatalog.entries.list
    • datacatalog.relationships.*
  • Read-only access to glossaries, categories, and terms:
    • datacatalog.entries.get
    • datacatalog.entries.list
    • datacatalog.entryGroups.get
    • datacatalog.relationships.list
    • resourcemanager.projects.list
    • resourcemanager.projects.get
  • Create or delete glossaries: datacatalog.entryGroups.create

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

For more information, see Predefined roles for Data Catalog.

Create and manage business glossaries

The following sections describe how to create, view, modify, and delete a business glossary.

Create a business glossary

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Knowledge Catalog Glossaries page.

    Go to Glossaries

  2. Click Create business glossary.

  3. On the Create business glossary page, specify a name, location, and description for the business glossary.

    The name and location fields are mandatory. You cannot change the location after you create the glossary.

  4. Click Create.

    The glossary is created under the current project and the glossary page is displayed.

View the list of available glossaries

  • In the Google Cloud console, go to the Knowledge Catalog Glossaries page.

    Go to Glossaries

    The My glossaries pane displays all the organization's glossaries you have permission to view, along with their descriptions and last modified timestamps.

Modify a glossary

You can modify the name and description of a glossary.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Knowledge Catalog Glossaries page.

    Go to Glossaries

  2. Click the glossary you want to modify.

    • To edit the name, click Edit, enter a new name, and click Save.

    • To edit the description, click Edit description, enter a new description, and click Save.

Delete a glossary

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Knowledge Catalog Glossaries page.

    Go to Glossaries

  2. Click the glossary you want to delete.

  3. Click Delete.

    To confirm your action, enter the glossary name and click Confirm.

Create and manage categories

The following sections describe how to create, view, update, and delete categories.

Create a category under a glossary

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Knowledge Catalog Glossaries page.

    Go to Glossaries

  2. Select a glossary in which you want to create a category, and click Create category.