GCP – Standardize your business terms with Dataplex business glossary, now GA

In enterprises, departments often describe their data assets using terminology in silos, and frequently having different interpretations of the same term. This can lead to miscommunication and inconsistent understanding of the enterprise’s data assets. Moreover, some of these terms can be technical (based on the analysis required to arrive at them), making it difficult for different business users to understand them. This is where Dataplex business glossary comes in, letting you standardize business terminologies, and build a shared understanding across the enterprise. 

Today, we’re excited to announce the general availability of business glossaries in Dataplex Universal Catalog. Dataplex business glossary provides a central, trusted vocabulary for your data assets, streamlining data discovery and reducing ambiguity, leading to more accurate analysis, better governance, and faster insights.

What’s in glossaries

Dataplex business glossary provides a mechanism to capture taxonomies by grouping business terms in categories and glossaries that help you describe business context. It empowers you to enrich data assets with this rich business context, which can be used for searching for the linked assets and establishing a common understanding of business context across the enterprise.

Glossaries let you do the following:

• Create a hierarchical glossary taxonomy: Manage and standardize business context by creating glossaries and terms. You can also group terms in a glossary into categories.

• Create links between terms and between terms-data assets: Create associations between similar and related terms. Terms can also be used to describe the entire data asset or specific columns within a data asset.

• Search: Find all assets linked to a term to drive analysis. Searching for terms, categories and glossaries is also supported.

• Import taxonomies from external sources: Migrate glossaries from another tool to Dataplex business glossary by using the bulk import API in JSON format.

• Migrate existing Data Catalog glossary taxonomy to Dataplex catalog: If you’re currently using the preview of glossaries in Data Catalog, you can use the export and import mechanism to transition them to glossaries on Dataplex Universal Catalog.

Here’s what Ericsson, an early adopter of Dataplex business glossaries has to share: 

“Google Cloud Dataplex business glossaries are a foundational capability in enhancing the clarity of our data assets. Our teams now possess a unified understanding of critical business terminology, fostering superior collaboration, facilitating more assured data-driven decision-making, and becoming an essential part of our data strategy. Business glossaries have proven transformative capabilities that can be effectively managed within Dataplex, adapting to changing business needs.” – William McCann Murphy, Head of Data Authority, Ericsson

Get started with using glossaries

You can navigate to business glossaries within the Glossary tab in Dataplex Universal Catalog. You can manage glossaries, create associations between terms and data assets and search for them, all from the console.

Dataplex business glossary is now generally available. To know more, refer to the user guide for glossaries, and for kickstarting your transition from preview to glossaries on Dataplex Universal Catalog refer to the guide here.