Azure Data Catalog frequently asked questions

Data Catalog is a fully managed service, hosted in Microsoft Azure, that serves as a system of registration and discovery for enterprise data sources. With Data Catalog, any user, from analysts to data scientists and developers, can register, discover, understand, and consume data sources.

Data Catalog addresses the challenges of data-source discovery and “dark data” so that users can discover and understand enterprise data sources.

Data Catalog is designed for technical and non-technical users, including:

• Data developers and BI and analytics professionals: People who are responsible for producing data and analytics content for others to consume.
• Data stewards: People who have the knowledge about the data, what it means, and how it's intended to be used.
• Data consumers: People who need to be able to easily discover, understand, and connect to the data they need to do their job, by using the tool of their choice.
• Central IT: People who need to make hundreds of data sources discoverable by business users, and who need to maintain oversight over how data is being used and by whom.

Data Catalog is available until August 2025. You'll need to be migrated by that time.

You can migrate to Microsoft Purview service which offers unified data governance for your entire data estate.

Data Catalog services are currently available in the following data centers:

• West US
• East US
• West Europe
• North Europe
• Australia East
• Southeast Asia

The Free Edition of Data Catalog is limited to 5,000 registered data assets.

The Standard Edition of Data Catalog supports up to 100,000 registered data assets.

Any object registered in Data Catalog, such as tables, views, files, and reports, counts as a data asset.

For a list of currently supported data sources, see Data Catalog DSR.

To submit feature requests and other feedback, go to the Data Catalog on the Azure Feedback Forums.

When you purchase Office 365 E5 with Power BI Pro License, Microsoft creates a default catalog in the subscription's region automatically. This catalog uses the free SKU. The Office 365 / Power BI user license is managed in the administration page.

However, this type of data catalog doesn't have an Administrator Option and isn't visible in the Azure portal. You can’t delete this type of data catalog. Similarly, you aren't allowed to rename the data catalog, and you can’t move it to another region.

Users accounts that are assigned a Power BI Pro license automatic have access to the data catalog due to License Agreement when they signed up for Office 365 E5 with the Power BI Pro License. This type of user has full access to data catalog assets without administrative privileges. That kind of user is not part of Catalog User role in Azure Data Catalog.

To register your data in Data Catalog:

1. In the Azure Data Catalog portal, in the Publish area, start the Azure Data Catalog registration tool.
2. In the Data Catalog data source registration tool, sign in with the same credentials that you use to access the Data Catalog portal.
3. Select the data source and the specific assets that you want to register.

The specific properties differ from data source to data source but, in general, the Data Catalog publishing service extracts the following information:

• Asset Name
• Asset Type
• Asset Description
• Attribute/Column Names
• Attribute/Column Data Types
• Attribute/Column Description

After you register assets with Data Catalog, there might be a period of 5 to 10 seconds before they appear in the Data Catalog portal.

The simplest way to provide metadata for registered assets is to select the asset in the Data Catalog portal and then enter the values in the properties pane or schema pane for the selected object.

You can also provide some metadata, such as experts and tags, during the registration process. The values you provide in the Data Catalog publishing service apply to all assets being registered at that time. To view the recently registered objects in the portal for more annotation, select the View Portal button on the final screen of the Data Catalog data source registration tool.

You can delete an object from Data Catalog by selecting the object in the portal and then clicking the Delete button. Removing the object removes its metadata from Data Catalog but doesn't affect the underlying data source.

An expert is a person who has an informed perspective about a data object. An object can have multiple experts. An expert doesn't need to be the “owner” for an object, but is simply someone who knows how the data can and should be used.

To report problems, share information, and ask questions, go to the Azure Data Catalog Q&A forum, or open a support request.

We’re actively working on adding more data sources to Data Catalog. If you want to see a specific data source supported, suggest it (or voice your support if it has already been suggested) by going to the Data Catalog on the Azure Feedback Forums.

To run the Data Catalog registration tool, you need permissions on the data source that allows you to read the metadata from the source. To also include a preview, you must have permissions that allow you to read in the data from the objects being registered.

Data Catalog also allows catalog administrators to restrict which users and groups can add metadata to the catalog. For more information, see How to secure access to data catalog and data assets.

Data Catalog is a cloud service that can work with both cloud and on-premises data sources to deliver a hybrid data-source discovery solution. There are currently no plans for a version of the Data Catalog service that runs on-premises.

We’re actively working to expand the capabilities of Data Catalog. If you want to have more metadata extracted from the data source during registration, suggest it (or vote for it, if it has already been suggested) in the Data Catalog on the Azure Feedback Forums.

If you would like to include column/schema metadata, previews, or data profiles, for data sources where this metadata isn't extracted by the data source registration tool, you can use the Data Catalog API to add this metadata. For more information, see Azure Data Catalog REST API.

Select the data assets in the Data Catalog, and then select the Take Ownership button. Owners of data assets in Data Catalog can change the visibility settings to either allow all users to discover the owned assets or restrict visibility to specific users. For more information, see Manage data assets in Azure Data Catalog.

To update the metadata for data assets that are already registered in the catalog, re-register the data source that contains the assets. Any changes in the data source, such as columns being added or removed from tables or views, are updated in the catalog, but any annotations provided by users are retained.

Go to the Azure Data Catalog Q&A forum.