In Data Governance and Catalog, you can view business, technical and manual lineage for assets depending on the asset type. You can also view various lineage levels depending on the granularity of data that you want to see in the lineage.
Business, technical, and manual lineage
To define lineage between assets, you must have the Edit privilege for the assets.
Based on the asset type, you can view the following types of lineage:
•Business lineage. Business assets display business lineage. You can view business lineage for data set and system assets. For example, if you are viewing the lineage for a data set, you can see how data flows between data sets and their associated parent system assets. Business analysts typically use business lineage to understand the source of the data and to ensure that the data is coming from a trusted source.
The following image displays the business lineage for a sample business data set:
•Technical lineage. When you view data lineage for a technical data element, such as a column, you can choose to view the technical lineage or the business lineage if that data element is associated with a business data set. Technical lineage allows data architects to drill down to the smallest unit of data, navigate through the entire journey of data from the source to destination, and view data transformations.
The following image displays the technical lineage for a sample data element, along with the choice to switch between business or technical lineage:
•Manual lineage. If you want to establish a connection between a manual data element that you created and other business and technical assets for governance purposes, use the Create Manual Lineage option on the Relationships tab of an asset.
Note: Data Governance and Catalog creates a relationship of the is in Manual Lineage with type between the manual data element and other assets when you create a manual lineage.
The following image displays the manual lineage for a sample manual data element:
Data lineage level
Based on the granularity of information that you want to see, you can choose to view data lineage at various levels.
•Catalog source level lineage. This is the highest lineage level that you can view for technical data sets. At this level, the data flows from one catalog source to another with the lineage aggregating data from the data element or data set level.
The following image shows the catalog source level lineage for a sample technical data set:
•System level lineage. This is the highest lineage level that you can view for system assets and business data sets. At this level, the data flows from one source system to another with the lineage aggregating data from the data set level.
The following image shows the system level lineage for a sample Microsoft Power BI Report:
•Data Set level. This is a high level lineage that shows how the data flows from one data set to another without drilling down to the the constituent data element level in the data flow. For example, an Oracle table, an SQL table, and an Amazon S3 flat file are all considered data sets.
The following image shows the data set level lineage for a sample technical asset, and depicts how the data flows across technical data sets that include Oracle tables, Amazon S3 flat files, and Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services mapping task instances:
•Data Element level. This is a granular level lineage that displays the data elements belonging to the data sets that are involved in the data flow, how data flows from source to destination, and how the data is transformed.
The following image shows the data element level lineage for a sample technical asset, and displays how the data element is transformed from an Oracle column to an Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services calculation and more. You can select any data element and expand all the hops to see its entire journey from source to destination:
Switching between lineage types
You can switch from one lineage type to another based on the type and granularity of data that you want to see in the lineage. When you switch from a data set level lineage to a data element level lineage, you can filter the lineage to include specific data sets and data elements in the lineage. You can also select the Calculation Expression and Sensitivity overlays from the Filter dialog box. When you select the Calculation Expression and Sensitivity overlays, you can hover over the data element tooltip to see the calculation expression that the column uses and the sensitivity of data elements on the asset node.
The following image shows the Filter dialog box with the overlays:
Optionally, if you want the lineage to include all the data, you can click Cancel on the Filter dialog box.
When you switch between data set and data element level lineages for technical and business assets, the selected overlay for Glossary, Business Impact, and Data Quality overlays are retained and Calculation Expression and Sensitivity overlays are reset.
