Enrich Metadata Using Custom Properties
Capture and customize technical and business metadata to enrich a specific object in Data Catalog.
At times, the default properties that are created during the harvest of a data source aren't enough to capture all the context for a data catalog object. For example, a data analyst gets only technical metadata from the revenue table of a car accessories division. Adding details such as business description, update frequency, certification status, or data owners, can provide more business context to the technical metadata and benefit the data users. With the help of business metadata, data consumers can understand, discover, and classify data in a better way.
The custom properties feature of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Catalog allows you to capture and customize technical and business metadata to enrich a specific object. For example, for a table, you can define its data owner, validity, and frequency of update. Custom properties are flexible, configurable, and easy to use.
- Create the following custom properties and associate them to object types:
- Data Owners
- Business Description
- Data Sensitivity
- Certified
- Archival Date
- Populate values for the properties for different objects.
- Search, filter, and explore data using custom properties.
- Edit a custom property configuration.
- Delete a custom property.
Before You Begin
To perform this tutorial, you must have the following requirements:
- An Oracle Cloud Infrastructure account. See signing up for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
- Access to use the Data Catalog resources. See getting started and policy examples.
- Create a dynamic group (such as data-catalog-dynamic-group) that includes the specific data catalog OCID as a resource in the group.Example:
Any {resource.id = 'ocid.datacatalog.oc1..<unique_ID>'} - Complete the following tutorials:
- Getting Started with Data Catalog
- One of the harvesting from data sources tutorials listed on the Data Catalog Tutorials page
1. Create Access Policies
You require the CATALOG_NAMESPACE_UPDATE permission to create custom properties.
As an administrator, you add a policy to allow a group to manage compartments in a tenancy.
To add a policy to manage a compartment, follow these steps:
Create a compartment for the resources that you create in this tutorial.
To create a policy, follow these steps:
2. Create Custom Properties
Learn how to create various custom properties.
3. Set Values for Custom Properties
From the object detail tabs of the data catalog object type with which you have associated a custom property, you can set, view, and modify the values for the property. Learn how to set the values for the custom properties that you created in the previous topic.
While creating custom properties, you associated Data Owners, Certified, and Archival Date with data entity. To set values for the properties, follow these steps:
- Access the Data Entities tab by clicking Data Entities on the Home tab.
- In the Data Entity list, select the data entity you want to edit. The data entity details tab opens. In the Custom Properties section, you can see that the Data Owners, Certified, and Archival Date custom properties are listed.
- In the Custom Properties section, click the Edit link.
- In the Edit Custom Properties panel that opens as an overlay, do the following:
- In the Data Owners field, add one or more values.
- In the Certified field, select True or False, based on whether the data entity is certified.
- In the Archival Date field, select the date on which the data needs to be archived.
- Click Save Changes.
While creating custom properties, you associated Business Description with data assets. To set values for the property, follow these steps:
- Access the Data Assets tab by clicking Data Assets on the Home tab.
- In the Data Assets list, click the data asset you want to edit. The data asset details tab opens. In the Custom Properties section, you can see that the Business Description custom property is listed.
- In the Custom Properties section, click the Edit link.
- In the Edit Custom Properties panel that opens as an overlay, do the following:
- In the Business Description field, enter information about the data.
- Click Save Changes.
While creating custom properties, you associated Business Description with attributes. To set values for the property, follow these steps:
- Click + from tabs and select Attributes.
- In the Attributes list, select the attribute you want to edit. The attribute details tab opens. In the Custom Properties section, you can see that the Business Description custom property is listed.
- In the Custom Properties section, click the Edit link.
- In the Edit Custom Properties panel that opens as an overlay, do the following:
- In the Business Description field, enter information about the data.
- Click Save Changes.
While creating custom properties, you associated Data Sensitivity with glossary, category, and Term. To set values for the property, follow these steps:
- Access the glossary details tab.
- In the Hierarchy pane, select the glossary, category, or term that you want to edit.
- Click Edit from Custom Properties. The Edit Custom Properties panel opens as an overlay. In the Custom Properties section, you can see that the Data Sensitivity custom property is listed.
- In the Edit Custom Properties panel that opens as an
overlay, do the following:
- In the Data Sensitivity field, select the value describe the sensitivity of the data. The list of values appears based on the values that you configured while creating the property.
- Click Save Changes.
4. Search and Filter Using Custom Properties
Customize your search results to use the custom properties you create in data catalog. The following procedure describes how you can customize your search results to use the Data owners custom property.
- From Home, click Data Entities.
- In the Data Entities list, view the Data owners custom property for all the data entities in the search summary.
- The Data owners custom property also shows up under Custom Filters. Select a data owner. The Data Entities list is updated to show only the results that match the selected data owner.
- From the sort list, select either ascending or descending for Data owners. The Data Entities list is updated to show the results in the selected order by data owner.
5. Edit a Custom Property Configuration
6. Delete a Custom Property
- On the Custom Properties page, from the list of custom properties, click the custom property that you want to delete.
- On the details page of the property, click Delete.
- In the Delete Custom Property confirmation box that appears, type Delete to confirm the deletion. When you delete a custom property, any association of the custom property to data catalog objects are removed.
- Click Delete.
What's Next?
You can now create other custom properties and set values for them.