Data Catalog

A data catalog is a searchable inventory of all the data assets in an organization — which tables and datasets exist, what each column means, where the data came from, who owns it, and how fresh it is. Think of it as a library catalog, but for your company's data instead of books.

It matters because in a big organization the hardest part of analysis is often just finding the right, trustworthy data and not accidentally using an abandoned or duplicated table. Good catalogs add data lineage (a map showing how each table was built from upstream sources, so you can trace an error back to its origin) and definitions everyone agrees on. This is the practical heart of data governance — making data findable, understandable, and trusted.