Use Denodo Data Catalog for exploring the Denodo server metadata

Data Catalog

If you have followed previous tutorials, in your Virtual DataPort you will have something similar to this:
Control_Center

For this tutorial, we will assume that the Data Virtualization Basics tutorial Data Virtualization Basics tutorial has been completed.

NOTE

Launching the Data Catalog

The Data Catalog is a software distributed as a web application included as part of the Denodo 8.0 that offers data analysts, business users and application developers searching and browsing capability of data and metadata in a business friendly manner for self-service exploration and analytics.

For starting this web tool, you have to open the Denodo Platform Control Center, and start the Data Catalog. Once it changes the status to "Running", click the Data Catalog link to open the Web tool (by default, https://127.0.0.1:9090/denodo-data-catalog).

Now login to the Data Catalog using the standard login details (admin/admin):

The first time you login to the Data Catalog, you will notice the Synchronize Metadata popup window. This needs to be run when you open the Data Catalog for the first time, in order to ensure that the Data Catalog reflects the latest state of the Denodo 8.0 server you are connected.

Run the VDP Synchronization as follows:

Click the Synchronize the metadata now link.
Click Continue on each Synchronization step.
The views are now synchronized so you can start exploring!

Using the Metadata Search

Our first example is from the Data Catalog home screen.

Let's use the scenario of the Business Analyst to explore a simple use case, by searching for clients, by typing in client and hitting enter.

Here we have the results of our search. From Data Catalog 8.0, this search will seek views or web services that contain the query terms in the element’s metadata, such as:

Its name.
Its description.
The names of its fields.
The descriptions of its fields.
The values of any custom properties it has assigned.

For example, let's click on the view client to be taken to the summary of the selected view:

For now we have done a search in the Virtual DataPort metadata. In the next section, we will investigate more advanced functions of the Data Catalog!