The Enterprise Data Catalog

Part I. Organizing Data So You Can Search for It

This first part of the book is about the most fundamental reality in library and information science: how you organize data defines how you can search it. It’s a reality that automatically enforces itself in all sorts of inventories, repositories, lookup tools, and search engines, and also in data catalogs.

In Chapter 1, “Introduction to Data Catalogs”, I will discuss what a data catalog is from a high-level perspective: the core functionality of a data catalog, its technological components, who uses it and who maintains it, and the benefits of a data catalog.

Then, in Chapter 2, “Organize Data: Design a Robust Architecture for Search”, I deep dive into how you should design your data catalog. I will explain how to build stable logic structures that will be able to contain data in a logical way over a long period of time.

Chapter 3, “Understand Search: Concepts, Features, and Mechanics”, introduces you to search. The main capability of data catalogs is search, and in this chapter, you get the necessary insight to understand how search works.

Finally, Chapter 4, “Apply Search: From Simple to Advanced Patterns”, makes everything come together. You know how a data catalog works, you know how to organize data, you know how search works, and now, in this chapter, you will see how you can apply search. You will truly see that how you organize data defines how you can search it.