does the community have advice on good data dictionary products?

Question

hi we are in bad need of a data dictionary. I've heard ideas ranging from a spreadsheet to everything else out there. does the community have any insight? In my opinion lineage is not something we really need. the big thing is a tool where we can enter really good definitions, where words can be scanned and maybe a few more things i'm not thinking about right now. i suppose the thought about lineage was a bit premature because i can see how the "source screen or document" could be important. one of the goals is naming consistency and avoiding other names for the same thing.

i know its a bit off subject but honestly where else would i go with this question?

Answer 1

i skimmed the 15 products referenced at https://dbmstools.com/categories/data-dictionary-tools . all seem biased toward one db technology or another. But the biggest problem i see is that they focus on erds etc after the fact and most base their "capability" on tapping into extended properties. I want an agnostic/decoupled product where we can truly document the BUSINESS elements before they are designed into a relational and/or olap repository. I want to stay away from excel because i want more familiar scanning capability and result generation. feel like i need to roll my own being careful that even if it (metadata) is based in sql server, that it easily be migrated if we dont always use sql server for this kind of metadata source. I'm ok with this or an off the shelf product having some sort of lineage or impact capability but i dont need an ssis documenter. i'm focused on the business.

i'm doing a read on the differences amongst dictionary, catalog and glossary. Also , i should mention that within reason, sample data values and volumes would be very useful in my dictionary/catalog/glossary. I know these get unwieldy sometimes. maybe queries that generate these would be very useful so we arent doing double duty.

Answer 2

this link (i think its also an advertisement) https://www.octopai.com/data-dictionary-vs-business-glossary/ tries to delineate the differences amongst dictionaries, glossaries and catalogs. they are suggesting that the catalog is where everybody can go for what they are searching. but there is some confusion then in that they are suggesting the other 2 need to be in place for the catalog to work.