Importing metadata with IBM Manta Data Lineage (IBM Knowledge Catalog)

You can capture and import asset metadata and lineage metadata 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 Knowledge Catalog
Manta Data Lineage (to import lineage metadata)

These services are not available by default. An administrator must install the services. To determine whether a service is installed, open the Services catalog. If the service is installed and ready to use, the tile in the catalog shows Ready to use.


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 lineage metadata from the data sources that are listed in Supported connectors for lineage import.

Overview

IBM Manta Data Lineage is a service introduced in IBM Cloud Pak for Data 5.1 release.

The process of importing metadata involves the configuration of the connection to the data source and specifying parameters for the metadata import job. Depending on what type of metadata you import, whether it is asset metadata or lineage metadata.

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.

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:

Technical metadata
Technical metadata provides the information that is required to create an asset in a project or catalog. Technical metadata provides asset details, relationships, and the preview of the contents of the asset. For data assets, the technical 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.

Learn more

Parent topic: Importing metadata