InfoSphere Business Glossary and its Assets and Terms

Designated users can create business glossary assets with InfoSphere Business Glossary. Business glossary assets are of the following types –

• Terms 
• Categories 
• Information governance policies 
• Information governance rules 

What are Assets?

An asset is a piece of information that is of value to the organization and can have relationships, dependencies, or both with other information assets.

It can associate assets with terms by assigning the asset to the term to identify the – 

• Implemented data resources 
• Logical data model assets 
• Physical data model assets 
• Business intelligence (BI) assets that are related to the term 

Broadly there are two types of Assets –

• Assets in the metadata repository 
• Assets that reside outside the metadata repository, called external assets 

Assets in the Metadata Repository

It contains different types of assets: physical and logical model assets, implemented data resources, and business intelligence (BI) assets. It an view the following information about repository assets –

• Lists of assets that are assigned to terms 
• Lists of all assets of a particular type in the repository 
• Details about a particular asset, displayed on its own asset information page 

These can provides business analysts with the correct data sources that are associated with the term.

Typically, the data architect or data analyst works with the business analyst to decide which metadata repository assets are assigned to a term.

All Tools to Assign Asset to Term

We can use the following tools to import assets into the business glossary –

• IBM InfoSphere Business Glossary 
• IBM InfoSphere Metadata Workbench 
• IBM InfoSphere FastTrack 
• IBM InfoSphere Information Analyzer 

Best practice is – To use InfoSphere Business Glossary to assign large numbers of assets to terms.

How to Assign Asset to Term using Business Glossary

To assign assets to terms must be a Business Glossary Administrator or a Business Glossary Author with the correct permissions to the category/subcategories.

• If workflow is enabled, click the Development Glossary tab. If workflow is not enabled, click the Glossary tab. 
• Navigate to the details page of the term or category to be edit, click Edit. 
• While in edit mode, one can change any property of the term or category. 
• Change the properties and save the changes. 

If workflow is enabled, the edited term or category is in draft mode, or else the term is in the glossary, and can be viewed by all users who have the appropriate category permissions.

External Assets

It can create references from business terms to entities that are outside of the metadata repository. Some examples –

• A business process model or UML model stored in an asset management system 
• A web service or a quarterly report on a shared network drive 

Ability to assign business terms to external assets extends the value of Business Glossary in the following ways –

• Enables the glossary to give meaning to any technical assets of interest to the business, regardless of where they exist. 
• Helps business users understand the meaning of all technical assets that are used in organizational processes. 

With external assets, we can do the following actions –

• Assign an external asset to a term describing the asset in detail for business users to identify it, locate it, and decide whether the asset is relevant and merits further investigation 
• While viewing a term, can see the external assets that the term is assigned to 

External Assets vs. Metadata Repository

External assets differ from assets that are in the metadata repository in the following ways –

• Cannot search or browse external assets using Business Glossary because external assets are outside of the metadata repository 
• Cannot assign stewards to external assets. 
• External assets exist only in relationship to a term. If term deleted, all information about the external asset is deleted from the metadata repository. 
• External assets cannot be included in displays of business lineage or data lineage using Business Glossary.