Catalog assets (Watson Knowledge Catalog)
An asset in a catalog contains information about data or data analysis.
There's no limit to the number of assets in a catalog.
The information about assets that is stored in a catalog includes:
- The type of asset
- Asset properties, such as the description, format, and classification
- The asset access to control who can access the asset
- A preview of the contents of some asset types
- A generated profile of the contents of some asset types
- Ratings and reviews of assets by catalog collaborators
- Activities of some asset types
- Lineage for some assets
If data protection rules are enforced for the catalog, they can block specific catalog members from viewing or using the asset. You can also decide to mask data in asset columns depending on their contents. In this case users can view an asset
but not all data is revealed to them. A lock icon 
next to the column name indicates that the data in the column is masked by a data protection rule.
Types of assets
You can add assets from these types of sources to a catalog:
- Files from your local system, including structured data, unstructured data, and images
- Connections to data sources. You can add connections to IBM or third-party data sources
- Data assets from a connection to a data source
- Connected folder assets from a connection to a file system
- Data assets from projects
- Notebooks from projects
- Trained Watson Machine Learning models from projects
- Dashboards from projects
- Business intelligence assets from a remote data source through metadata import
- Transformation scripts from a remote data source through metadata import
- Data model assets from a remote data source through metadata import
- Data assets and COBOL copybooks that are imported from mainframes through the use of Data Virtualization Manager for z/OS
- Model use cases from the model inventory
For a full list of asset types, see Asset types and properties.
Asset properties
All asset types have a common set of properties. Some asset types have additional properties. See Asset properties and Adding assets to a catalog.
When you add an asset to a catalog or edit an existing asset, you specify these common properties:
- The asset name and an optional description. The asset name cannot be empty, contain Unicode control characters, or contain only blank spaces. You can include links in the description.
- Asset format. Automatically detected.
- Tags. Ungoverned metadata that makes searching for the asset easier. Tags can contain only spaces, letters, numbers, underscores, dashes, and the symbols # and @. Click
to add tags. - Data classes that are assigned to the asset and to columns in data assets.
- A classification for the data asset.
- Business terms that apply to the asset. You can also add business terms to columns in data assets.
- Relationships with other assets.
Asset access
You can control access to an asset on the Access page with the privacy level and asset membership:
- Privacy. You can choose whether to restrict access to the asset:
- Public: Default. No restrictions on finding or using the asset.
- Private: Only asset members can find or use the asset.
- Members. The catalog collaborators to add as members of the asset. Members are important if you restrict access to the asset.
Learn more
Parent topic: Catalogs