Metadata Center is a centralized service that extracts, processes, and manages metadata from business systems to support data governance and improve data organization and analysis.
Prerequisites
Dataphin supports metadata collection for relational databases by default. To collect metadata from other data source types, you must purchase the required feature.
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Before V5.3, some data sources — AnalyticDB for MySQL 3.0, PolarDB-X (formerly DRDS), SAP HANA, and Hologres — required Metadata Center initialization in a metastore tenant before collection tasks could be configured. V5.3 and later removed this requirement.
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You can initialize Metadata Center only if the metastore tenant engine is MaxCompute, Hadoop, or Transwarp TDH 9.3.x.
Permissions
Only super administrators, system administrators, or global custom roles with metadata permissions can access the metadata menus.
What is metadata
Metadata describes the characteristics of data — its content, origin, format, and structure. Often called "data about data," metadata helps you identify and locate datasets, supports data organization and retrieval, and provides a foundation for data governance, compliance, and quality management.
Metadata types
Metadata is classified into three types based on its use: technical, business, and management.
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Technical metadata stores the technical details of a data warehouse, such as data module, subject domain, project, storage type, storage format, and lifecycle. Dataphin treats technical metadata as a technical asset.
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Business metadata describes data warehouse content from a business perspective. It provides a semantic layer that allows business users to understand data without deep technical knowledge.
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Management metadata covers the processes used to organize, integrate, and govern technical and business metadata. It serves users in different roles — such as business and development — and supports enterprise business systems and data analytics.
Access Metadata Center
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In the top navigation bar of the Dataphin homepage, select Governance > Metadata.
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The left-side navigation pane on the Metadata page lists the available features.
Main menu
Submenu
Description
Metadata Collection
Collection Overview
View a summary of collection tasks, data sources, collection object types, and supported versions. Supported sources include traditional databases (MySQL, Oracle) and big data stores (Hive, Hologres).
Collection Tasks
A collection task connects to a data source through an adapter, collects object metadata into Dataphin, and uses a built-in parser to parse, store, and display the metadata in a uniform manner.
Collection Instances
Each collection instance is generated by a task on schedule or by manual trigger.
Metadata Management
Metadata List
View collected metadata in a list and query it from different perspectives.
General Settings
Source Systems
Map collected metadata to its source business system. Use this mapping to filter assets in lists and catalogs or to display business system lineage.
Sampling Settings
Data sampling helps business users understand the data's structure and aids in SQL development.
Profiling and Analysis
Configure automatic profiling to optimize resource usage. Settings include table scope, record retention period, maximum number of concurrent global tasks, execution timeout, and profiling parameters.
Metadata Change Logs
Control the retention scope and number of versions for metadata change records to reduce storage costs.