Manage a business glossary

This document describes how to create and manage business glossaries in Knowledge Catalog (formerly Dataplex Universal Catalog). Use a business glossary to establish a standardized vocabulary for your data assets, which reduces ambiguity and improves data discovery and governance across your organization.

Knowledge Catalog business glossary use cases

By creating a common language for data using Knowledge Catalog business glossary, you can achieve the following:

• Define a clear hierarchy of business categories and terms.
• Link concepts using synonyms and show relationships between terms.
• Search for data resources based on business concepts, not just technical names.

Knowledge Catalog business glossary helps streamline data discovery and reduce ambiguity, resulting in better governance, more accurate analysis, and faster insights.

Elements of a business glossary

This section describes the key elements that you can use to structure a business glossary.

Glossary

A glossary has the following properties:

• Overview. Describes the purpose and contents of the business glossary. You can add images, links, and tables. While HTML formatting isn't supported, you can include HTML code formatted as code or add a link to an HTML page. You can also use rich text formatting options such as bold, italics, underline, bulleted lists, paragraphs, headings, and code blocks. The maximum supported size is 120 KB.

• Description. Describes the glossary. The text in this field is indexed for search. The maximum supported size is 1 KB.

• Region. Specifies the region where the glossary is located.

Category

A category lets you organize and structure various categories and terms. Categories are defined within a business glossary. You can nest categories up to three levels.

A category has the properties of a glossary as well as the following properties:

• Contacts. Specifies the person responsible for maintaining the category. This property is descriptive and doesn't affect the permissions of the category.
• Parent. Specifies a relationship that is used to establish the parent of the current category. You can nest up to three categories.

The region of a category is the same as the region of the glossary that contains it.

Term

A term (short for "glossary term") describes a concept that's used in a particular branch of business within your company. For example, the marketing department of a company might create a term that describes cost per click. Terms are defined within a business glossary, either in the glossary directly or within any category found in the glossary.

A term has the properties of a category as well as the following properties:

• Synonyms. Specifies links between terms that have the same meaning. See Synonym terms .
• Related terms. Specifies links between terms that are conceptually related to each other, but that have different meanings. See Related terms .
• Related entries. Specifies links between terms and data assets, or between terms and columns within data assets.
• Data quality rules. Specifies data quality requirements for the term. For more information, see Reuse data quality rules .
• Contacts. Specifies the person responsible for maintaining the term. Terms don't inherit the contacts that are defined in categories.

The region of a term is the same as the region of the glossary that contains it.

Synonym terms

A synonym is a relationship that indicates equivalence between two different terms. Use synonyms when two terms with the same meaning are defined by different teams in different glossaries. For example, you can create a synonym to link the terms "profit" and "earnings."

Related terms

A related term is a relationship that indicates that two terms are associated with each other, but have different meanings. For example, you can create a related term to link the terms "revenue" and "profit."

Limitations

• Knowledge Catalog business glossary isn't supported for Assured Workload projects.
• Business glossaries are housed within projects and locations; the limitations for projects and locations apply to glossaries.

Required roles

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

• For data administrators, get full access to glossaries, categories, terms, synonyms, and related terms, and to set IAM policies: Dataplex Catalog Admin ( roles/dataplex.catalogAdmin )
• For data stewards or data owners, get access to creating, editing or deleting glossaries, categories, terms, links between terms, links between terms and data assets , and search: Dataplex Catalog Editor ( roles/dataplex.catalogEditor )
• For data analysts or data consumers, get read-only access to glossaries, categories, terms, links between terms and between terms and data assets, and search: Dataplex Catalog Viewer ( roles/dataplex.catalogViewer )

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 permissionssection:

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

For more information, see Knowledge Catalog IAM roles .

Create and manage business glossaries

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

Create a business glossary

View the available glossaries

  using 
  
  Google.Api.Gax 
 
 ; 
 using 
  
  Google.Api.Gax.ResourceNames 
 
 ; 
 using 
  
  Google.Cloud.Dataplex.V1 
 
 ; 
 using 
  
 System 
 ; 
 public 
  
 sealed 
  
 partial 
  
 class 
  
 GeneratedBusinessGlossaryServiceClientSnippets 
 { 
  
 /// <summary>Snippet for ListGlossaries</summary> 
  
 /// <remarks> 
  
 /// This snippet has been automatically generated and should be regarded as a code template only. 
  
 /// It will require modifications to work: 
  
 /// - It may require correct/in-range values for request initialization. 
  
 /// - It may require specifying regional endpoints when creating the service client as shown in 
  
 ///   https://cloud.google.com/dotnet/docs/reference/help/client-configuration#endpoint. 
  
 /// </remarks> 
  
 public 
  
 void 
  
 ListGlossariesRequestObject 
 () 
  
 { 
  
 // Create client 
  
  BusinessGlossaryServiceClient 
 
  
 businessGlossaryServiceClient 
  
 = 
  
  BusinessGlossaryServiceClient 
 
 . 
  Create 
 
 (); 
  
 // Initialize request argument(s) 
  
  ListGlossariesRequest 
 
  
 request 
  
 = 
  
 new 
  
  ListGlossariesRequest 
 
  
 { 
  
 ParentAsLocationName 
  
 = 
  
  LocationName 
 
 . 
  FromProjectLocation 
 
 ( 
 "[PROJECT]" 
 , 
  
 "[LOCATION]" 
 ), 
  
 Filter 
  
 = 
  
 "" 
 , 
  
 OrderBy 
  
 = 
  
 "" 
 , 
  
 }; 
  
 // Make the request 
  
 PagedEnumerable<ListGlossariesResponse 
 , 
  
 Glossary 
>  
 response 
  
 = 
  
 businessGlossaryServiceClient 
 . 
  ListGlossaries 
 
 ( 
 request 
 ); 
  
 // Iterate over all response items, lazily performing RPCs as required 
  
 foreach 
  
 ( 
  Glossary 
 
  
 item 
  
 in 
  
 response 
 ) 
  
 { 
  
 // Do something with each item 
  
 Console 
 . 
 WriteLine 
 ( 
 item 
 ); 
  
 } 
  
 // Or iterate over pages (of server-defined size), performing one RPC per page 
  
 foreach 
  
 ( 
  ListGlossariesResponse 
 
  
 page 
  
 in 
  
 response 
 . 
 AsRawResponses 
 ()) 
  
 { 
  
 // Do something with each page of items 
  
 Console 
 . 
 WriteLine 
 ( 
 "A page of results:" 
 ); 
  
 foreach 
  
 ( 
  Glossary 
 
  
 item 
  
 in 
  
 page 
 ) 
  
 { 
  
 // Do something with each item 
  
 Console 
 . 
 WriteLine 
 ( 
 item 
 ); 
  
 } 
  
 } 
  
 // Or retrieve a single page of known size (unless it's the final page), performing as many RPCs as required 
  
 int 
  
 pageSize 
  
 = 
  
 10 
 ; 
  
 Page<Glossary> 
  
 singlePage 
  
 = 
  
 response 
 . 
 ReadPage 
 ( 
 pageSize 
 ); 
  
 // Do something with the page of items 
  
 Console 
 . 
 WriteLine 
 ( 
 $"A page of {pageSize} results (unless it's the final page):" 
 ); 
  
 foreach 
  
 ( 
  Glossary 
 
  
 item 
  
 in 
  
 singlePage 
 ) 
  
 { 
  
 // Do something with each item 
  
 Console 
 . 
 WriteLine 
 ( 
 item 
 ); 
  
 } 
  
 // Store the pageToken, for when the next page is required. 
  
 string 
  
 nextPageToken 
  
 = 
  
 singlePage 
 . 
 NextPageToken 
 ; 
  
 } 
 }