Sneak Peak: ODPi Webinar on Data Governance – The Why and the How

We all use metadata everyday. You may have found this blog post through a search, leveraging metadata tags / keywords. Metadata allows data practitioners to use data outside the application that created it, find the right data sets, and automate governance processes. Metadata today has proven value, yet many data platforms do not have metadata support.

Furthermore, where metadata management exists it uses proprietary formats and APIs.  Proprietary tools support a limited range of data sources and governance actions, and it can be an expensive efforts to combine their metadata create an enterprise data catalogue. In an ideal world, metadata should have the ability to be moved with the data and be augmented and processed through open APIs for permitted usages.

Enter Open Metadata, which enables various tools to connect to data & metadata repositories to exchange metadata.

Open Metadata has two major parts:

1. OMRS – Open Metadata Repository Services makes it possible for various metadata repositories to exchange metadata. Metadata repositories can be from various vendors or concern with specific subject area.

2. OMAS – Open Metadata Access Services provides specialized services to various types of tools/applications and thus enable out of the box connection to metadata. These tools can be, but not limited to:

   1. BI and Visualization tools

   2. Governance tools

   3. Integration tools and engines such as ETL and information virtualisation

The OMAS enables subject matter experts to collaborate around the data, feeding back their knowledge about the data and the uses they have made about it to help others and support economic evaluation of data.

Open Metadata aims to provide data practitioners with an enterprise data catalog that lists all of their data, where it is located, its origin (lineage), owner, structure, meaning, classification and quality. No matter where the data resides. Furthermore, new tools from any vendor would be able to connect to your data catalog out of the box. No vendor lock-in and no expensive population of yet another proprietary, siloed metadata repository. Additionally, Metadata would be added automatically to the catalogue as new data is created.

But how do you ensure consistency, no vendor lock-in and cost effectiveness of Open Metadata?  The Answer is Open Governance.

Open Governance enables automation of metadata capture and governance of data. Open governance includes 3 frameworks:

1. Open Connector Framework (OCF) for metadata driven access to data assets.

2. Open Discovery Framework (ODF) for automated analysis of data and advanced metadata capture.

3. Governance Action Framework (GAF) for automated governance enforcement, verification, exception management and logging.

Open Metadata and Open Governance together allows metadata to be captured when the data is created, moved with the data and be augmented and processed by any of the vendor tools.

Open Metadata and Governance consists of:

• Standardized, extensible set of metadata types

• Metadata exchange APIs and notifications

• Frameworks for automated governance

Open Metadata and Governance will allow you to have:

• An enterprise data catalogue that lists all of your data, where it is located, its origin (lineage),

• owner, structure, meaning, classification and quality

• New data tools (from any vendor) connect to your data catalogue out of the box

• Metadata being added automatically to the catalogue as new data is created and analysed

• Subject matter experts collaborating around the data

• Automated governance processes protect and manage your data

Dive into this topic further on Oct. 12 for a free webinar as John Mertic, Director of ODPi at The Linux Foundation hosts Srikanth Venkat, Senior Director, Product Management at Hortonworks, Ferd Scheepers, Chief Information Architect at ING and Mandy Chessell, Distinguished Engineer and Master Inventor at IBM.

Register for this free webinar now.