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Status Delivered
Workspace Knowledge Catalog
Created by Guest
Created on Mar 18, 2022

Add "label" for columns of Data Assets imported from connected database

Abstract:

For WKC catalog, Data Asset imported from Database table, has columns with name that defined in database. It is better to have additional column attribute such as "label" that represents the column in on WKC Data Asset view.

(see attached screen_image1.png and screen_image2.png)


Scenario:

  1. There is "CUST" table with column "CUST_ID, CUST_NM, CRD_NO" in a database, and a user (data engineer) import the table into the WKC with metadata import, a Data Asset with name "CUST" with columns CUST_ID, CUST_NM, CRD_NO is created.

  2. Data engineer want to label those columns so that data analyst can easily understand column meaning without see detail column information. Thus the Data Engineer edit column info with editor in WKC, specify column Label attribute as the following (see screen_image2.png).

    1. CUST_ID -> Customer ID

    2. CUST_NM -> Customer Name

    3. CRD_NO -> Credit Card Number

  3. Now Data Analysts can view the table columns using those business terms (e.g. Customer Name) , instead of system terms (CUST_NM). (screen_image1.png)

Users impacted:

Most of Japanese (or Chinese, Korean) customer will want this capability, since business users wants Japanese column name, still DB column names are represented as English (by Database restriction etc.) so there are large information gap.

Also this capability will help English customers as well, since Column ID is limited length (due to DB restriction), and column names are not easy to read in some case (like the example above).


Current workaround and pain point:

Column Description would be the place where those information (e.g. "Customer Name" for CUST_NM column) would be put. However to see the description, user should click "eye" icon on the column and see whole detail of the column (with business term etc.), and it is tedious to do to all of the columns one by one.

Also user want to input more information into the description field, such like "Customer Name. Full name of the customer with given name, sir name, and middle name, if exists" . So the description is not appropriate for the "label" use.

Needed By Quarter
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Apr 7, 2022

    Thank you for comment.

    Using "Business Term", instead of using a new property (such as Label I mentioned) would be fine.

    One thing I'm worrying about is, in case when 2 or more Business Terms are assigned to a column, how it should be displayed on the UI.

  • Admin
    Susanna Tai
    Reply
    |
    Apr 7, 2022

    Hi Shuichi, for your scenario, many of our customers use business terms for this purpose. Business terms will first be defined in WKC, then using data curation (quick scan or automated discovery or metadata enrichment, depending on which CPD version you have) to automatically assign business terms to columns.

    On our roadmap, we have plans to improve the UI so that the column names will be displayed alongside their assigned business terms.

    Regards,
    Susanna Tai

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Mar 23, 2022

    added screenshot images as comment (for user who cant see image in body).