Lineage (Watson Knowledge Catalog)

Data lineage is the process of tracking data as it is moved and used by different software tools. Lineage tracks where data came from, how it was transformed, and where the data was moved to. For example, an operational system that handles account transactions, to the point in which these transactions are used by business users.

You can see the lineage feature on the asset's Catalog page.

Requirements and restrictions

You can view the lineage of assets under the following circumstances.

Required service
Watson Knowledge Catalog service.
Required permissions
To view lineage, you can have any role in a catalog.
Workspaces
You can view the asset lineage feature in these workspaces:
  • Catalogs
Types of assets
These types of assets have a lineage:
  • Data asset types
  • Physical data model asset types
  • Logical data model asset types
  • Transformation script asset types
  • Report asset types
  • Custom asset types

Lineage provides visibility into origin, transformations, and destination of data. Lineage makes the following tasks easier:

  • Providing a visual understanding and form of traceability to acquire a greater understanding for the information that is depicted, and perform actions to correct issues or alert owners.
  • Understanding where information came from and developing confidence and trust in reports and services that use that information.
  • Complying with regulatory requirements by documenting and providing witness to systems and processes that are used to compile and aggregate data, often sensitive or personal data.
  • Supporting development and engineering requirements to understand the impact analysis for a chosen data item or process, and understanding which downstream systems and data stores would be impacted by such a change.

Nodes and members

Nodes are assets from which a lineage graph is build. Members are children of nodes. For example, if you use tables to generate lineage graph, the separate tables become nodes of a lineage graph and the columns become members.

Learn more

Parent topic: Asset types and properties