Data Inventory

Data Inventory is a very simple term but sometime get a little bit confused with Data Catalog and Data Assets etc.

Data Assets is about knowing which kind of data we have in our organization with monetary value.

Data Catalog is about knowing system details, databases, tables, and columns and then mapping those with business requirements.

Data Inventory is about consolidating information from Data Asset and Data Catalog with addition details like.

• where this data comes from
• who generated this data?
• when it was generated
• frequency of inserts, updates, and deletes.
• contents details
• security and privacy approaches
• metadata management approaches
• data quality standards
• transformation details
• business rules
• data models
• list of software
• name of all the applications
• licensing details
• data sources details
• target systems details.
• owners of source and target systems

We all maintain inventory of something or the other, either it’s at home or office. A simple example is Passwords Inventory, now a days there are many social media applications then Hotmail, Gmail, etc. We normally maintain all those passwords somewhere safe right so that is your Password Inventory.

Please note, data inventory is one of the key inputs for regulatory bodies, compliance and auditory.

Especially after Covid-19 impact in from 2019 to 2022 when most of the world is forced to work from home for also 2 years, data inventory has become more important than ever. Those organizations which were reluctant to be on Cloud, moved to Cloud. Today May 2022, if not 100% but 99%+ organization are having On-Prem as well Cloud presence in their organizations either in shape of application or online conference tools or even WhatsApp. Who doesn’t used mobile applications like WhatsApp, we all do?

‘Data Inventory is also a Metadata.’