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Business Glossary Overview

The Business Glossary provides a centralized vocabulary of business terms linked to your physical data assets. It bridges the gap between business language and technical metadata, enabling teams to discover data by concept rather than table name.

Why a Business Glossary?​

Data catalogs track technical assets — tables, views, columns — but business users think in terms like "Revenue", "Active Customer", or "Churn Rate". Without a shared vocabulary, teams search by technical names and duplicate definitions across tools.

The Business Glossary solves this by providing:

  • Single source of truth — One authoritative definition for each business concept
  • Data discovery — Find tables by searching for business terms, not technical identifiers
  • Semantic coverage — Track which terms are linked to which products and fields
  • Governance alignment — Ensure terminology is consistent across teams and systems

Key Concepts​

Terms​

A Business Term is the core entity. Each term has a name, a definition (rich text), an optional category for grouping (e.g., "Finance", "Marketing"), and a status indicating its lifecycle stage.

Term Statuses​

StatusMeaning
DraftTerm is being defined — not yet authoritative
ApprovedTerm has been reviewed and is the official definition
DeprecatedTerm is no longer in use — kept for historical reference

Synonyms​

Terms can include synonyms — alternative names for the same concept. For example, "ARR" as a synonym for "Annual Recurring Revenue". Synonyms improve discoverability in search.

Linking​

Terms are linked to data assets via two relationship types:

  • Product links — Associate a term with a data product (many-to-many)
  • Field links — Associate a term with a specific column or field within a product

These links surface on the product detail page's schema tab, giving analysts immediate context about what each field represents in business language.

Browsing the Glossary​

The glossary is accessible from the space navigation. You can browse terms in several ways:

  • Alphabetical index — Filter by first letter for quick lookup
  • Category filter — Narrow to terms in a specific business domain
  • Status filter — View only Approved terms, or find Drafts that need review
  • Search — Terms are indexed in Global Search with a distinct result type

Integration with the Catalog​

When a term is linked to a product or field, it appears inline on the product profile and schema tab. This means analysts viewing a table can immediately see the business definitions for each column without leaving the page.

Getting Started​