Using data catalog tools can help you understand, manage, and access your company’s data. These tools provide a comprehensive view of your data across the organization. They act as an inventory of all your data assets, and they also provide powerful search functions. With a data catalog, you can analyze the data more effectively and understand what it means to your company.

Using a data catalog tool can also help your organization create a data governance strategy. This process helps companies make better business decisions based on data. A data catalog tool helps your organization adopt a common data vocabulary, ensuring consistency across data. Data governance can help companies avoid potential errors and other risks related to data, including data quality issues.

Most data catalog tools include a search interface, but some offer a natural language search option that allows you to search the data using natural language. Some data catalogs even include a business glossary, which defines the major terms and concepts your company uses. By using a data catalog, you can monitor how the data has changed over time (more).

A data catalog tool can also automate the discovery of data sources. By leveraging metadata management capabilities, it allows users to discover related data, perform searches, track data lineage, and enable self-service for business users. Many of them also include glossaries and data governance capabilities. Some of the more sophisticated data catalog tools also provide basic analytics and recommendations.