Importing metadata

You can capture and import asset metadata and lineage information for the data in your organization. This data can be on a wide variety of data sources. When you import asset metadata, assets are created.

Required services
IBM watsonx.data intelligence
Required permissions
To create, manage, and run a metadata import, you must have these roles and permissions:
  • The Manage asset discovery user permission.
  • The Admin or the Editor role in the project.
  • The Admin or the Editor role in the catalog to which you want to import or publish the assets.
  • Access to the connections to the data sources of the data assets to be imported and the SELECT or a similar permission on the corresponding databases.
Supported connections
You can import assets from the data sources that are listed in Supported data sources for curation and data quality.

Overview

The process of importing metadata involves the configuration of the connection to the data source and specifying parameters for the metadata import job.

The following steps provide an overview about the process of importing metadata. Follow the links in each step for more details.

  1. Create a data source definition.
  2. Create a connection to the data source in a project.
  3. Create a metadata import.

Each data source requires various connection and configuration details. You can find this information in each connection topic in the Connectors section and in Supported connectors for lineage import section. To check from which data sources you can import metadata, see Supported data sources for curation and data quality.

When you create a metadata import, the process of importing metadata starts immediately, unless you scheduled it to run at a specific time, or configured to job to not run at all.

Types of metadata

You can import these types of metadata:

Asset metadata
Asset metadata provides the information that is required to create an asset in a project or catalog. Asset metadata provides asset details, relationships, and the preview of the contents of the asset. For data assets, the metadata also allows for data profiling, data quality analysis, and provides access for people to work with the data.
Lineage metadata
Lineage metadata provides the lineage information for the data lineage graph. Data lineage shows where your data comes from, how it changes, and where it moves over time.

Types of assets

You can create the following types of assets by importing metadata:

Data assets
Data tables or files from a connection. If you want to run metadata enrichment or data quality rules on the imported assets, you import them to a project.
Cobol copybooks
The data structure of a COBOL program. You can import Cobol copybooks into projects and catalogs. Such assets cannot be downloaded, profiled, enriched through metadata enrichment, or used in Data Refinery.
Transformation script assets
The data transformations that change the format, structure, or values of data and that usually are part of ETL (extract, transform, and load) processes.

Importing assets with data lineage connections

If you use IBM watsonx.data intelligence version 2.3.0, you can import assets from the data sources which are listed in the Supported connectors for discovery, enrichment, and data quality topic. Starting with IBM watsonx.data intelligence version 2.3.1, you can additionally import assets from the data sources that can also be used for lineage metadata. For the list of such data sources, see Supported connectors for lineage import. However, importing assets from these two types of data sources requires different configuration and has different capabilities.

To clarify the difference between two types of asset import, the following terms are used:

The following table contains information about the required installation options for each type of the asset import.

Installation options Asset import (data governance connectors) Asset import (data lineage connectors) Lineage import
enableDataGovernanceCatalog: true only ✓ — —
enableDataLineage: true only — — ✓
2.3.0 with enableDataGovernanceCatalog: true and enableDataLineage: true ✓ — ✓
2.3.1 with enableDataGovernanceCatalog: true and enableDataLineage: true ✓ ✓ ✓

The following table summarizes key feature differences between two types of asset import.

Feature Asset import (data governance connectors) Asset import (data lineage connectors)
Import target Catalog or project Catalog only
Metadata enrichment ✓ —
Select asset types to import
(with the Expand asset import option)		 — ✓
External agent connection — ✓
Optional import configuration:
- Define import scope (by selecting assets or adding include or exclude lists)
- Provide external inputs		 — ✓

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