Semarchy xDG Overview

Welcome to Semarchy xDG!

Introduction to Semarchy xDG

Semarchy xDG is a data catalog and data governance solution to manage complex environments and large-scale data initiatives.

For data teams who must manage complex environments, Semarchy xDG is a data catalog that provides a comprehensive and measurable landscape that helps them take accurate and fast actions. Unlike most data catalogs, Semarchy xDG collects and exposes not only data assets but also customizable metrics to drive decisions and efficiency.

For governance stakeholders who need to define and manage large-scale programs, Semarchy xDG is a data governance platform that provides an accurate and real-time vision of the enterprise data governance, that helps them drive the initiative with confidence. Unlike other data governance products, Semarchy xDG harvests, measures, and aggregates data assets and measures to provide dedicated visibility on the governance initiative.

Concepts

Multi-layer governance

Semarchy xDG is a multi-layer tool that provides governance capabilities supporting the activities and needs of multiple user personas. It is designed on the premise that both assets and metrics are required to drive governance activities.

It helps you organize and manage assets and metrics in multiple layers:

  • Technical: The technical assets (typically, data catalog metadata), including datasets such as databases, tables, reports, files, etc.

  • Operational: The assets representing data in action, including data flows and transformations.

  • Business: The assets representing data from the point of view of the business stakeholders, including applications and processes.

  • Strategic: The assets representing high-level business or governance objectives and initiatives.

This layered approach serves different purposes and personas:

  • The Technical and Operational Metadata layers serve mainly a technical and data discovery purpose. This is a Data Catalog and Metadata/Data Observation layer.

  • The Business Metadata layer serves business purposes and is intended for business users and stakeholders.

  • The Governance layer serves C-level users.

Assets and metrics

In this approach, each layer hosts :

  • Assets: Technical (data assets, reports, etc.), operational (flows), business (applications, roles, rules), and governance linked by relations, which allow relating these assets vertically (containers-type, and others), horizontally (lineage, impact). At the highest level, the generic metadata concept is an initiative, domain, etc.

  • Metrics associated with assets, computed/harvested from the metadata and data at each level, either harvested or derived (and computed from rules). These metrics support data and quality observation, data usage, and infrastructure monitoring use cases. As we go up in the pyramid, the metrics are only aggregated/derived to support governance program monitoring.

Governance organization

Semarchy xDG provides multiple artifacts to organize your assets and governance:

  • Tags to establish a user-driven organization, also called folksonomy.

  • Business Terms, defined into Business Glossaries and organized in Term Groups. These terms can be used as both a taxonomy and ontology to represent your organization’s knowledge and best practices.

  • Domains are like organizational categories where you can group related assets. You can manage Domains centrally or let Domain owners handle them. Each asset belongs to only one Domain at a time.

  • Initiatives help you organize and manage your assets in a domain, and can be easily accessed by different teams or stakeholders in your organization. Initiatives usually group assets that belong to a project or program, from the point of view of a given governance layer.

  • Ownership defines the relationship between assets, business terms, domains, initiatives, and users and groups of users. Ownership is typed. For example, an asset has technical owners, business owners, etc.