Introducing "Similar Assets": A New Way to Discover and Manage Your Data

Today we announce the launch of Similar Assets, a powerful new feature in Metaphor designed to help data professionals quickly identify tables, views, and datasets that share similar columns or structures, both within your data warehouse and across your dashboard platforms like Power BI/Tableau/Looker/ThoughtSpot and others.

"Similar assets will make it easier to identify and take action on cases of duplication" - Kjetil Lysen, Head of Data Core @ Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM)

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Unlocking Data Discovery Across Your Warehouse

With vast amounts of data scattered across numerous tables and views, finding the right dataset can feel impossible for most organizations. That’s exactly where Similar Assets comes into play. 

Users can now effortlessly discover tables and views that have similar columns throughout the entire data warehouse.

Whether you're a data analyst looking for the most relevant dataset, or a data engineer aiming to understand the data landscape better, Similar Assets provides a streamlined way to:

• Find Related Data Quickly: Locate tables and views that share similar schemas or column names, reducing the time spent searching for the right data.
• Enhance Data Understanding: Gain insights into how data is structured and related across different assets, facilitating better analysis and reporting.‍
• Improve Data Organization: Identify inconsistencies or redundancies in data storage, helping maintain a clean and efficient data warehouse.

Bridging the Gap with Dashboard Platforms

We didn't stop at the data warehouse. Similar Assets also extends its powerful discovery capabilities to your dashboard platforms, including Power BI/Tableau/Looker/ThoughtSpot and others. Users can now find similar datasets within these platforms, finally bridging the gap between data storage and data visualization.

Think about data warehouse architects and administrators who need to manage and monitor data usage across the organization. By identifying similar datasets in dashboards, they can:

• Detect Data Sprawl: Quickly find instances where self-service users have created duplicate or unauthorized BI datasets instead of using approved data sources from the warehouse.
• Promote Data Governance: Ensure that teams are utilizing the correct and most up-to-date data, maintaining consistency and accuracy in reporting.
• Optimize Resource Usage: Reduce unnecessary data duplication, saving storage space and improving system performance.

Combatting Data Sprawl and Enhancing Governance

Data sprawl is a common challenge in organizations that encourage self-service analytics. While empowering users is essential (we LOVE self-service!), it can lead to the proliferation of redundant or unauthorized datasets, which can cause confusion, inconsistencies, and compliance issues.

With Similar Assets, Metaphor provides a solution that balances user autonomy with data governance:

• Empower Users Responsibly: Allow analysts and business users to explore and utilize data confidently, knowing they are accessing the correct assets.
• Maintain Control: Give data warehouse architects the tools to monitor and manage data usage effectively, ensuring adherence to data policies and standards.
• Facilitate Collaboration: Promote better communication between data teams and end-users by providing visibility into data relationships and usage patterns.

“This feature is a game-changer for governance and visibility. It gives my team and I the power to instantly unlock insights and take control of our data landscape” – Sunny Pachunuri, Head of Data Engineering @ Endpoint Closing

Getting Started with Similar Assets

To start leveraging the power of Similar Assets, simply navigate to the new feature within the Metaphor platform. From there, you can search for a specific table, view, or dataset, and Similar Assets will display a list of related assets that share similar columns or structures.

Not sure where to start? Try out some of these use cases: 

• Consolidating Data Assets: Identify and eliminate redundant tables or views to streamline your data warehouse.
• Enhancing Data Lineage: Understand how different datasets are related, aiding in data lineage tracking and impact analysis.
• Improving Data Onboarding: Help new team members get up to speed quickly by showcasing related datasets and their uses.

Ready to see more? Book a Demo Today

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About Metaphor

The Metaphor Metadata Platform represents the next evolution of the Data Catalog - it combines best in class Technical Metadata (learnt from building DataHub at LinkedIn) with Behavioral and Social Metadata. It supercharges an organization’s ability to democratize data with state of the art capabilities for Data Governance, Data Literacy and Data Enablement, and provides an extremely intuitive user interface that turns even the most non-technical user into a fan of the catalog. See Metaphor in action today!