Data Catalog

A data catalog is a searchable inventory of the data assets across your company — tables, columns, dashboards, pipelines — enriched with metadata like descriptions, owners, freshness, and how each field is defined. Think of it as a library catalog for your data: instead of asking a colleague "which table has the real revenue number?", people search the catalog and get an authoritative answer. For SaaS teams, a catalog becomes valuable once you have more than a handful of tables and more than one person querying them. It combats "tribal knowledge", reduces duplicated metrics, and helps new hires self-serve. Popular options include open-source DataHub, OpenMetadata, and Amundsen, plus commercial tools baked into warehouse platforms. Practical note: a catalog is only as good as the metadata in it. The winning approach is automated harvesting — pulling schemas, lineage, and usage stats directly from your warehouse and BI tools — supplemented by lightweight human descriptions and ownership tags. Don't try to document everything by hand; prioritize the tables people actually query.