Lineage (IBM 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.

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.

You can see lineage information on the asset's Lineage page in a catalog.

This feature is not available by default. Knowledge graph must be installed with IBM Knowledge Catalog, IBM Knowledge Catalog Premium, or IBM Knowledge Catalog Standard. For information on installing knowledge graph, see Specifying additional installation options in the IBM Software Hub documentation.

Requirements and restrictions

You can view the asset's lineage under the following circumstances.

Required service

Lineage requires the IBM Knowledge Catalog service.

Required permissions

To view lineage, you can have any role in a catalog.

Workspaces

You can view lineage feature in catalogs.

Types of assets

These types of assets have a lineage:

  • Data asset types
  • Transformation script asset types
  • Report asset types
  • Custom asset types
  • Data integration assets
  • Lineage relationship mapping files

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