Qlik Data Catalyst Overview
Qlik Data Catalyst, now integrated into the Qlik Data Integration platform, is a comprehensive enterprise data management solution designed to enhance data governance, integration, and self-service capabilities within the Qlik ecosystem.
What Qlik Data Catalyst Does
Qlik Data Catalyst addresses the growing need for effective data management in modern analytics. It helps organizations to onboard, catalog, prepare, and publish data from various sources, ensuring data integrity, security, and usability. This solution is crucial for managing large and diverse data sets, which are increasingly critical for business decision-making.
Key Features and Functionality
Data Onboarding
- Qlik Data Catalyst allows data to be ingested from all sources and formats, including internal and external data. It supports three onboarding methods: Managed (full storage and management by QDC), Registered (metadata and sample data stored, with actual data remaining in the source system), and Addressed (only metadata integrated into QDC).
Catalog and Discovery
- The Smart Data Catalog provides a user-friendly interface, similar to an Amazon-like shopping experience, where business users can search, preview, and enrich data sets. Users can view details such as data lineage, field statistics, sample data, and descriptions. The catalog also allows users to add tags and comments to enhance metadata, making data discovery more intuitive and self-service oriented.
Data Preparation
- Qlik Data Catalyst enables users to combine and transform raw data into business-ready data without the need for coding. This is achieved through a simple graphical interface, allowing powerful transformations to be performed seamlessly.
Data Publishing
- Once data is prepared, it can be published to the visualization tool of choice, such as Qlik Sense. This process is designed to be intuitive, allowing users to select and publish data directly from the catalog to their target platform.
Lineage and Metadata Management
- The solution captures and complements metadata from source systems, including validation, profiling, lineage, usage, and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) detection. Additional metadata is enriched by user inputs such as tags and comments, providing a comprehensive view of the data assets.
Integration with Qlik Ecosystem
- Qlik Data Catalyst is tightly integrated with other Qlik products, such as Qlik Sense. It includes features like the QVD Catalog, which allows Qlik Sense users to browse and select QVD-based data sources directly within the Qlik Sense interface.
Scalability and Performance
- The solution leverages enterprise-grade scalability, reliability, and performance by sitting on top of data storage and compute platforms like Hadoop, Linux FS, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure.
In summary, Qlik Data Catalyst (now part of the Qlik Data Integration platform) is a robust tool that streamlines data management, enhances self-service capabilities, and ensures data governance, making it an essential component for organizations seeking to optimize their data analytics environments.