Generating business terms

Generate meaningful business terms from technical data assets to expand your glossary and ensure that your data assets are properly described and accurately utilized.

You can generate business terms on your own or use the MCP server with the execute_term_generation tool and an AI agent of your choice.

All generated business terms have names, descriptions, a gen AI tag, and a classification of Personal Information or Sensitive Personal Information if applicable.

One business term is generated for each asset. Some business terms might be assigned to multiple assets. For example, CST and CUST might be assigned Customer. The number of draft terms might be lower than the number of assets and columns selected.

Watch this video to learn how to generate business terms in the metadata enrichment panel.

This video provides a visual method to learn the concepts and tasks in this documentation.

Prerequisites

  1. Ensure that the generative AI-based enrichment capabilities are enabled for the project:

    1. Open the Manage tab on your project page.
    2. In Expand metadata, under Display names, for Generation method, select Generative AI if it's not selected.
    3. In Term and classification assignment, for Term assignment methods to use, select Gen AI based term assignment if it's not selected.

  2. Ensure you have the following roles and permissions:

    1. The Admin, Owner, or Editor catalog collaborator role in the primary category or a custom role with the permission to create classifications.
    2. User permissions:
      • Manage data protection rules
      • Access catalogs
      • Manage asset discovery
      • Access governance artifacts
      • Manage glossary
      • Manage governance categories
      • Manage Projects
      • Administer governance artifacts - If you're using the MCP server with the execute_term_generation tool, you must also have Administer governance artifacts permission alongside the other ones.

Generating business terms

  1. Create a new metadata enrichment or edit an existing one:

    1. Select Expand metadata and Assign terms and classifications as your goals.
    2. For scope, select which existing categories to reference to prevent creating duplicates.
    3. Select a primary category to store them in one place and make them easier to identify.
    4. Run the metadata enrichment job.

    Alternatively, use watsonx.data intelligence MCP server to first create a metadata enrichment (create_or_update_metadata_enrichment_asset tool) and then run the metadata enrichment job (execute_metadata_enrichment_asset). Make sure to set Expand metadata and Assign terms and classifications as your goals, and select a primary category.

  2. Optional: If the display names aren't accurate, edit them.
    Display names are used to generate business terms and classifications.

  3. Generate business terms in one of the following ways:

    The execute_term_generation tool generates business terms for all assets in the metadata enrichment job. If you want to select individual assets or columns, you must generate business terms in the metadata enrichment panel.

The generated business terms are uploaded into the category that you chose as the primary category. The terms are created in the Draft state so you can review and publish them by using your standard approval workflow. You can also decide to keep or change the generated classifications. To view the generated classifications, open the business term.

Important: First, generate all the terms that you need and then publish them all in one go.
If you published the terms and decide that you need more terms, run the metadata enrichment job again, generate terms, and publish them.

Generating business terms in the metadata enrichment panel

  1. Generate business terms for tables.
    You must first generate business terms for tables and then for their columns to see is a part of relationships.

    For each metadata enrichment job, the generated business terms appear in one workflow.

    1. On the Assets page, identify the tables for which you want to generate business terms and click Add or edit > Generate business terms.
    2. In the Governance panel, click Generate terms.
    3. After the job is finished, refresh the page to view the generated business terms.

  2. Generate business terms for columns inside the table:

    1. On the Assets page, open the table for which you want to generate business terms.
    2. Select the columns and click Add or edit > Generate business terms.
    3. After the job is finished, refresh the page to view the generated business terms.

Generating business terms with the execute_term_generation MCP tool

Consider the following tips:

  1. Prompt the AI agent to generate terms for the metadata enrichment job.
    Example prompt:
    Run term generation on <MDE_name> in <project_name_id>.
  2. View the results in the agent and use the links to open the MDE job in the UI and review the generated business terms.

Generated classifications

  • Classifications are added only for columns.
  • For new business terms in the Draft state, the generated classification (PI or SPI) is applied to the draft term. To view the assigned classification, open the business term.
  • For existing business terms in the Draft state, the classification is updated as follows:
    • If the generated classification doesn't already exist for a business term, the classification is added.
    • If the same classification already exists for a term, nothing is changed.
    • If the existing term has a Personal Information classification and a Sensitive Personal Information is generated, the PI is removed and is replaced with the SPI because SPI inherently includes PI.

This video provides a visual method to learn the concepts and tasks in this documentation.

Next steps

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