Support for field-level lineage

As part of delivering explainable BI, new catalog capabilities are now available. Explainable BI is the concept that users will gain more confidence in using data and making decisions based on it, if they have a good understanding, or explanation, of the information’s origin.

Lineage capabilities have expanded to not only visually show the data history by table but also by the specific field within a table—starting with applications all the way back to the original source. Field-level lineage helps you establish trust in the data. When you explore an app, you can now quickly access a data lineage summary that traces back any dimensions and measures in a chart to the original sources. This makes it easy for any user to understand where the data came from within a chart.

There is also now a distinction between Lineage and Impact Analysis.

• Lineage shows you a detailed visual representation of the history of a field or dataset, back through the applications and interim datasets to its original source.
• Impact Analysis shows you a downstream view of the dependencies for a data element, including the databases, apps, files, or links that will be directly or indirectly impacted if the value of that particular field changes.

Impact analysis shows the downstream direct and indirect dependencies for a data element

• Working with lineage and impact analysis
• Field-level lineage and Impact Analysis videos

Catalog improvements and new features

A new dataset overview replaces the previous dataset detail viewer and provides key descriptive and technical metadata about datasets. Information in the overview includes the source file type, space, creation and last modified timestamps, field and row count, creator and owner, usage metrics, applied tags and common data classifications. Catalog now also provides three views of field profile data: Tile, List, or Data

Understanding your data with catalog tools