Data Catalog
A data catalog is a centralized metadata management tool that provides an organized inventory of an organization's data assets, enabling users to discover, understand, and govern data. It indexes data from various sources, such as databases, data lakes, and applications, and provides detailed information about data lineage, quality, and usage. This helps organizations improve data accessibility, compliance, and collaboration across teams.
Developers should learn and use data catalogs when working in data-intensive environments, such as data engineering, analytics, or machine learning projects, to efficiently locate and understand relevant datasets. They are essential for ensuring data governance, compliance with regulations like GDPR, and facilitating collaboration between data engineers, scientists, and business analysts by providing a single source of truth for metadata.