Data Lineage

What is Data Lineage?

Data Lineage helps in understanding the journey the data takes from its creation through its transformations over time. It uncovers the lifecycle of data from start to finish. It is a process of understanding, recording, and visualizing data as it flows from data source to consumption.

Why is Data Lineage important?

Knowing the source of a particular dataset is not always enough to understand its importance, process change, and updates. Knowing who made the change, how it is updated, and the process used improves the data quality. With data coming from disparate sources together, it is arduous to understand its transformation and get a simple visual flow. That’s why data lineage is vital for the business. It gives a clear picture of the data origination, how it is changed, and how it moves inside, across, and outside a given organization.

It allows data custodians to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of data throughout its lifecycle. It enables companies to track errors in data processes, implement process changes with lower risk, perform system migrations and combine data discovery with a comprehensive metadata view to create a data mapping framework. It plays an important role when strategic decisions rely on accurate information.

What are the benefits of data lineage?

• Data lineage focuses on validating data accuracy, consistency by allowing users to search upstream and downstream, from source to destination, to discover anomalies and correct them.
• Enables organizations to comply with regulations by tracking how data flows through various systems from source to destination and facilitates risk management by showing the audit trail for all data transformations clearly.
• Ensures the data is accurate, complete, and trustworthy to drive business decisions.
• Enables IT, team, to conduct impact analysis at a granular level saving their time from the manual analysis.