Google Cloud Data Catalog

What do you like best?

I can search any kind of data assets like datasets, tables, files etc. on GCP since its a central managed service. Its easy to create tag templates which can be attached to tables and columns with mandatory and optional information. Data Catalog existing dashboard shows us the highly used tables and views.

What do you dislike?

Right now, i cannot manipulate or add new cards to the Data Catalog dashboard. There are limited options right now to maintain tags where we could define complex long calculations. It does not support out of box integration with outer world so we cannot cover complete universe of data assets we have.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

We are maintaining metadata information about our tables and views by attaching tags to them. We also know that how many records are in the source system and how many have been transferred to different target tables in BigQuery on GCP. We are also maintaining business glossary that by describing fields in business terms. So that knowledge stays with the company and if any new joiner arrives wont have difficulty to understand business terms used in the company.