Tools, Technologies, and Processes at the Intersection of Data Governance and
Metadata / ETL / Data Architecture & Modeling.

In many organizations, it's hard to tell where Data Governance ends and Data Management begins. After all, you can't manage what you can't name, and one of the most common governance efforts is to standardize the names and definitions of data elements.

So where are these definitions stored? Typically in tools - case tools, data dictionaries, metadata repositories, or other types of systems.

These types of tools store the information that is essential to every flavor of Data Governance and Stewardship. So if you're going to be serious about governance, you'll want to know about these types of tools - even if you won't be the one to put hands on keyboard to maintain data about your data.

If the last time you did a software survey was a few years ago, it's time to look again. Recently, many tool vendors have increased the functionality of their metadata-focused, modeling, and ETL tools to serve the needs of governance and compliance teams.

Gwen Thomas

President and founder, The Data Governance Institute
Publisher, The DGI Website and DataGovernanceSoftware.com