Get to Know Google's Cloud Data Catalog (In Public Beta)

Looking for a more natural way to manage your GCP hosted data assets? Then have we got some good news for you. Google has now brought its state-of-the-art Cloud Data Catalog into the market - available in a public beta release that was announced just in time for summer. The Google Data Catalog, for those who aren't aware, is a data management solution that helps companies to more quickly manage searches of their stored information and metadata. 

So, what does the new Google Cloud Data Catalog mean to you? Well, in simple terms, it will allow users to more rapidly track down information in their database by column name or table. That means that you can spend less time searching for insights, and more time taking advantage of the data that you have. 

The Cloud Data Catalog is built on the very same IT search infrastructure that you can find in Google Drive and Gmail. That means that you can rest assured you'll be getting a tried and tested experience. Additionally, with the Google Data Catalog, researchers will have the opportunity to search through a variety of crucial tables on BigQuery. You can even search topics across all of the cloud projects that you run at once, for a more efficient search.

Introducing the Google Cloud Data Catalog

If you haven't seen much information about the new Data Catalog online, then that's not much of a surprise. The release hasn't seen as much attention as you might expect. The first time we heard about it was in a blog from the Google Cloud Interaction Designer, Isaac Kuek. According to Kuek, the catalog is a very handy tool. Integration with access controls defined in the Cloud Identity and IAM environments means that you can find data with ease. There's no need to worry about configuring additional permissions for your data catalog either. 

In simple terms, your new Google catalog will allow you to oversee and manage your data more effectively by tagging critical assets with metadata that will enable you to search through your information at a later date. Business metadata will also be available to define using template tags, which you can apply to a host of data sets. 

According to Kuek, the Data Catalog experience will extend your typical business glossary, and support things like Booleans, doubles, enumerated type, and more. For instance, you'll be able to assign a brand-new business category as an enumerated type from an established list of categories. This will ensure that consistent groups are available whenever you need to store or capture new metadata.

Get the Most out of Your Data Assets

This isn't the first example of a cloud company updating its solutions for data asset management. We've seen countless other cloud platforms deliver similar experiences. For instance, AWS introduced their similar AWS Glue Catalog back in 2017, which allows companies to index data location, runtime metrics, and more within the AWS platform. Although Amazon got in ahead of Google when it came to provide an advanced data catalog, that doesn't make the new Google offering any less impressive. 

Recently, Google has been putting significant investment into enhancing its data management offerings. The company even acquired Looker to update its intelligence solutions. The arrival of a new Cloud data catalog is simply an insight into the fact that we should expect to see even more functionality in the Google Cloud data space in the months to come. 

As more organizations continue to recognize the value of switching their data strategies into cloud and hybrid environment, the need for a strong data management solution is growing. A cloud-native catalog for enterprise data management, like the new offering from Google, will be a must-have for companies now and in the future. The catalog offering will give business leaders a single point of truth and excellent visibility into their assets, no matter where they are. 

Visit your Google Cloud Platform admin control center to find out more about accessing the new Google Data Catalog in beta mode.