This sample use case shows how autonomous enrichment propagates curated enrichments across lineage-connected assets at Meridian Retail. It follows a single curated column from the warehouse catalog source to the reporting catalog source.
Meridian Retail is an online retailer that uses Data Governance and Catalog to govern its customer data. The SALES_WAREHOUSE catalog source holds the operational source metadata, and the SALES_REPORTING catalog source holds the downstream reporting metadata. The Customer table in SALES_WAREHOUSE feeds the Customer_Report and Customer_Summary tables in SALES_REPORTING.
Stewart, a data steward, has already curated the Email_Address column in the Customer table in the SALES_WAREHOUSE catalog source with the following enrichments:
•Description: Primary email address used to contact the customer.
•Business name: Customer Email Address.
•Classification: PII, a sensitivity classification for personally identifiable information.
•Glossary term: Email Address, from the enterprise business glossary.
Alex, a governance administrator, notices that the Email column in the Customer_Report table in SALES_REPORTING has no description, business name, classification, or glossary term, even though Stewart fully curated the source Email_Address column in the Customer table in SALES_WAREHOUSE. Reports built on the Customer_Report table give no indication that the column contains PII, and compliance reviews keep flagging the gap.
Alex has been closing that gap by manually copying Stewart's enrichments onto each matching column in SALES_REPORTING whenever a new reporting table appears. That doesn't scale because new tables arrive every release, and the manual copies drift out of sync whenever Stewart updates the source curation.
Alex wants the tables in SALES_REPORTING to carry the same trusted context as the source metadata, without repeating that manual work. Instead of curating each related column by hand, Alex uses autonomous enrichment to propagate Stewart's enrichments across the connected tables.
Alex first enables autonomous enrichment on the Configure page.
Alex then updates the SALES_REPORTING catalog source configuration with the following changes:
1Selects the enrichment types to receive: description, business name, classification, and glossary association.
2Chooses the nearest neighbor along data lineage for the enrichment source. Sets the direction to upstream and the number of hops to two.
3Enables the option to use only certified assets, so enrichments come only from certified sources.
4Sets the acceptance mode to Recommended.
Stewart curated the Email_Address column before Alex enabled autonomous enrichment at the global level. The catalog source receives only the enrichments created after that point, so the existing enrichments don't propagate automatically. To propagate them, Alex runs the catalog source job for SALES_REPORTING and includes the Autonomous Enrichment capability.
When the job runs, autonomous enrichment searches upstream from the Customer_Report table in SALES_REPORTING. The job finds the SALES_WAREHOUSE catalog source as the nearest connected source with enrichments, within the two-hop limit. In SALES_WAREHOUSE, the certified Customer table holds the curated Email_Address column. The enrichments from the propagate to the matching Email column in the Customer_Report table. The Email column has no enrichments yet, so it is eligible to receive enrichments.
The Customer_Summary table in SALES_REPORTING also has an Email column, but that column already has a description. Autonomous enrichment skips it and doesn't propagate the enrichments to it because the column is already enriched, . Enrichments propagate only to assets that don't already have enrichments.
The enrichments arrive as suggestions because the acceptance mode is Recommended. Stewart reviews the suggestions on the Email column and accepts them. The description, business name, PII classification, and glossary term then apply to the Email column.
The Email column in the Customer_Report table in SALES_REPORTING now carries the same enrichments as the Email_Address column in the Customer table in SALES_WAREHOUSE. Analysts can see that the column holds PII, and compliance reviews no longer flag it. Stewart curated the source metadata once, and the reporting inherits consistent metadata without extra manual work.
Going forward, propagation is seamless for the SALES_REPORTING catalog source. When Stewart curates a new column in SALES_WAREHOUSE, the enrichments propagate to the connected assets in SALES_REPORTING without another job run.