Catalog Source Configuration > Microsoft Fabric OneLake > Introduction to Microsoft Fabric OneLake catalog sources
  

Introduction to Microsoft Fabric OneLake catalog sources

You can use Metadata Command Center to extract metadata from a source system.
A source system is any system that contains data or metadata. For example, Microsoft Fabric OneLake is a source system from which you can extract metadata through a Microsoft Fabric OneLake catalog source with Metadata Command Center. A catalog source is an object that represents and contains metadata from the source system.
Before you extract metadata from a source system, you first create and register a catalog source that represents the source system. Then you configure capabilities for the catalog source. A capability is a task that Metadata Command Center can perform, such as metadata extraction, data profiling, data classification, or glossary association.
When Metadata Command Center extracts metadata, Data Governance and Catalog displays the extracted metadata and its attributes as technical assets. You can then perform tasks such as analyzing the assets, viewing lineage, and creating links between those assets and their business context.
The following table describes the capabilities of the catalog source:
Capability
Description
Data Profiling and Quality
  • - Data Profiling. Assesses source metadata and analyzes the collected statistics to discover content and structure, such as value distribution, patterns, and data types.
  • - Data Quality. Measures the reliability of the data and enables data usage.
  • - Data Observability. Identifies anomalies in the characteristics of the data.
Data Classification
Data classification is the process of identifying and organizing data into relevant categories based on the functional meaning of the data. Classifying data can help your organization manage risks, compliance, and data security.
Glossary Association
You can associate terms that are in the glossary with technical assets to provide user-friendly business names to technical assets. Glossary Association automatically associates glossary terms with technical assets or recommends glossary terms that you can manually associate with technical assets in Data Governance and Catalog.

Extraction and view process

To extract metadata from a source system, configure the catalog source and run the extraction job in Metadata Command Center. Then view the results in Data Governance and Catalog.
The following image shows the process to extract metadata from a source system:
The image shows the process of metadata extraction from a source system that begins with prerequisites verification, continues with the creation of the catalog source, and ends with viewing the extraction results.
After you verify prerequisites, perform the following tasks to extract metadata from Microsoft Fabric OneLake:
  1. 1Register a catalog source. Create a catalog source object, select Microsoft Fabric OneLake, and select the connection.
  2. 2Configure the catalog source. Specify the runtime environment and configure parameters for metadata extraction. Optionally, add filters to include or exclude source system assets from metadata extraction. You can also configure other capabilities such as data profiling and quality, data classification, or glossary association.
  3. 3Optionally, associate stakeholders. Associate users with technical assets, giving the users permission to perform actions determined by their roles.
  4. 4Run or schedule the catalog source job.
After you run the catalog source job, you view the results in Data Governance and Catalog.

About the Microsoft Fabric OneLake catalog source

You can use the Microsoft Fabric OneLake catalog source to extract metadata from a Microsoft Fabric OneLake source system.
Microsoft Fabric OneLake is a Microsoft Fabric data lake for analytics data.

Extracted metadata

Metadata Command Center extracts files and folders from a Microsoft Fabric OneLake source system.
You can extract workbooks, worksheets, and columns from Microsoft Excel files.
Metadata Command Center extracts the following metadata from a Microsoft Fabric OneLake source system:

File types

The following table lists the structures associated with the file types that you can extract metadata from:
File Type
Partition structure
AVRO
Single partition, multiple partitions, schema merge
CSV
Single partition, multiple partitions, schema merge
JSON
Single partition
Parquet
Single partition, multiple partitions, schema merge
You can extract metadata from TSV and TXT file types.
You can extract metadata from XML and XSD file formats as XML file objects. Metadata Command Center extracts only elements and attributes from XML and XSD files. If the size of the XML file exceeds 100 KB, Metadata Command Center extracts metadata from the initial 100 KB of the file. However, for XSD file types, Metadata Command Center extracts complete metadata.
You can extract metadata from the following Microsoft Excel file types:

Data profiling for Microsoft Fabric OneLake objects

Configure data profiling to run profiles on the metadata extracted from a Microsoft Fabric OneLake source system. You can view the profiling statistics in Data Governance and Catalog.
You can run data profiles on the following objects:

Compatible connectors

Before you configure a Microsoft Fabric OneLake catalog source, you must connect to the Microsoft Fabric OneLake source system.
Use the Microsoft Fabric OneLake connector to connect to the Microsoft Fabric OneLake source system.
For information about configuring a connection, see Connections.