Assets and Asset Collection Types
Explore how TopBraid EDG organizes assets
Asset Collection Types are Types of Knowledge Graphs in TopBraid EDG
TopBraid EDG creates an enterprise Knowledge Graph for data governance. It provides a modular set of different types of interconnected graphs, expressing knowledge about many things needed for managing and governing your data.
TopBraid EDG includes definitions for over 300 types of assets, such as Glossary Term, Requirement, Database, ETL Script and many others. An Asset is any technical, business or operational resource governed by an organization using TopBraid EDG.
Asset types are defined in special knowledge graphs called Ontologies (aka models). Ontologies that describe the pre-defined asset types are packaged with TopBraid EDG – ready to be used. EDG users can customize these definitions and can also create their own ontologies that formally describe data they want to capture with EDG.
Information about assets is grouped into meaningful domains or collections – according to the asset type. For example, Glossary Terms are defined in Glossaries. Data sources such as Databases are cataloged in Data Asset Collections. ETL Scripts are typically cataloged in Technical Asset Collections. Glossary, Data Asset Collection and Technical Asset Collection are types of knowledge graphs in EDG. Different types of assets and different types of collections help you focus and manage Data Governance tasks.
A small sample of the more than 300 available Asset Types
… pre-defined and ready to use in TopBraid EDG
TopBraid EDG can automatically populate information about your assets directly from the data sources.
After initial information capture, EDG lets you curate and enrich it using a combination of user collaboration and semantic AI.
With EDG, you can choose your starting point from several data governance packages – each offering a modular combinations of Asset Collection Types that work together – to support a comprehensive and staged approach to data governance.
All packages include an operational Governance Model. This is a special Knowledge Graph (asset collection) that lets you define your organization’s governance charter, governance/subject areas and domains, organizational structure (roles, users), policies, workflows, metrics, dashboards and other governance assets.
Descriptions of Key Asset Collection Types in TopBraid EDG
Big Data Assets
Big Data Assets support governance of assets that make up a big data ecosystem. Big Data assets include metadata for Avro and other Schemas, Catalogs, Clusters, Configurations, Containers, Files, HBase, HDFS, Jobs, Nodes, Property-Value Pairs, Regions, Resilient Distributed Datasets (RDDs), Schedulers, Sqoop and other Scripts, Tables and Trackers.
Included in EDG Package: Metadata Management
Content Tag Sets
Content Tag Sets are used for classifying content based on vocabularies managed by the EDG-VM Package. Use of Content Tag Sets requires the add-on module TopBraid Tagger and AutoClassifier. Users can run Tagger’s auto-classification capability to automatically assign relevant tags to content and review the results. They can also manually tag content through a visual interface that displays context for the content and vocabulary.
Included in Add-on Module: TopBraid Tagger with AutoClassifier used together with EDG Package: Vocabulary Management
Data Graphs
Data Graphs let users create, store and manage any information – based on ontologies of their choice. For example, to manage Customers or Products master.
Included in Add-on Module: Data Graphs and Custom Collections.
Enterprise Assets
Enterprise Assets cataloging and governing assets such as business functions, activities, roles, and information assets including forms, documents and reports.
Included in EDG Package: Metadata Management
Reference Data
Reference Datasets are controlled datasets of industry defined codes (country and currency codes, and product types). Reference data is found in many enterprise applications including back-end systems, front-end commerce applications, and data warehouses. In EDG, classes for respective reference datasets are defined in corresponding ontologies.
Included in EDG Package: Reference Data Management
Technical Assets
Technical Assets catalog and govern information about software systems, business applications as well as technical infrastructure like servers and networks.
Included in EDG Package: Metadata Management
Business Glossaries
Business Glossaries let you define and connect business terms. Creating a Business Glossary can provide a simple starting place for a data governance initiative. When used in combination with the metadata management packages in EDG, a glossary lets you establish connections between terms and technical metadata.
Included in EDG Packages: Business Glossary and Metadata Management.
Crosswalks
Crosswalks let you create connections between resources in two different asset collections. This is useful when defining connections between two different standard vocabularies or between standard and specialized local ones. They are also used to map two reference datasets. Applications can use saved crosswalk connection data to enhance the use of either vocabulary by taking advantage of the connected data and metadata for search, classification, and other operations.
Included in EDG Packages: Reference Data Management, Vocabulary Management
Datatypes
Datatypes support the specification of scalar data types, structured datatypes, scales and code lists. Scalar datatypes include all of the ORACLE data types. Structured data types provide for the definition of arrays, lists and other composite data types. Code lists are used to specify enumerated values that need not be governed as reference data, such as status values.
Included in EDG Packages: Metadata Management
Lineage Models
Lineage Models support capturing information about how data flows from databases, applications to users, for reports, in support of business activities and functions, and the enablement of enterprise capabilities.
Included in EDG Package: Metadata Management
Requirements
Requirements allow cataloging, capturing and connecting variety of requirements such as data requirements, regulatory requirements and security requirements and support traceability of requirements to other EDG-managed assets.
Included in EDG Package: Metadata Management
Content Corpora
Content Corpora is a collection of read-only textual items, such as documents, excerpts and websites — along with associated metadata. The original items are imported from external sources, such as CMSs or web sites and are not created nor edited within EDG.
Included in Add-on Module: TopBraid Tagger with AutoClassifier used together with EDG Package: Vocabulary Management
Data Assets
Data Assets support cataloging and governing assets that make up a data ecosystem. Data assets include databases, database columns and tables, data elements, datasets and their schemas, and logical and physical models.
Included in EDG Packages: Metadata Management
Enumerations
Enumerations are suitable for storing multiple, relatively small and simple codesets in a single asset collection. An example may be gender codes or age group codes. For larger and richer sets of codes, use reference datasets.
Included in EDG Package: Reference Data Management
Ontologies
Ontologies are knowledge models that can be used to generate data models (for example) or are simply used as for various purposes as important documentation and reference for the business stakeholders. In EDG, they can be used as conceptual models that can connect terms with the technical metadata (e.g., tables and columns).
Included in EDG Packages: Reference Data Management, Vocabulary Management for specific package requirements. Also included in ALL EDG Packages for customization of that package (EDG is an ontology-driven system).
Taxonomies
SKOS Taxonomies are vocabularies that are based on SKOS, the W3C standard for managing taxonomies and thesauruses. These information models contain hierarchies of terms connected using broader/narrower relationships. In addition to standard SKOS attributes, they can contain custom attributes and relationships.
Included in EDG Package: Vocabulary Management