Create and use a business glossary

Create and use a business glossary

This document describes how to use Knowledge Catalog to establish a standardized vocabulary for your data assets. By creating a business glossary, you reduce ambiguity and improve data discovery across your organization.

This quickstart uses a retail industry scenario with sample data in BigQuery to show you how to complete the following objectives:

1. Create a business glossary for retail operations.
2. Build a category hierarchy for inventory management.
3. Define business terms like Safety Stock Level.
4. Attach business terms to BigQuery columns.
5. Search for data using business context.

Before you begin

Set up your project:

Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

• Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
• Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

Go to project selector

If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

Enable the Dataplex and BigQuery APIs.

Roles required to enable APIs

To enable APIs, you need the Service Usage Admin IAM role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin), which contains the serviceusage.services.enable permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Enable the APIs

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

• Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
• Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

Go to project selector

If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

Enable the Dataplex and BigQuery APIs.

Roles required to enable APIs

To enable APIs, you need the Service Usage Admin IAM role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin), which contains the serviceusage.services.enable permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Enable the APIs

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to create and manage business glossaries, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles:

• Dataplex Catalog Admin (roles/dataplex.catalogAdmin) on the Knowledge Catalog (formerly Dataplex Universal Catalog) resource project
• BigQuery Data Editor (roles/bigquery.dataEditor) on the project where you use BigQuery

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Create the retail operations glossary

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Knowledge Catalog > Glossaries page.

   Go to glossaries

2. Click Create business glossary.

3. In the Display name field, enter Global Retail Operations Glossary.

4. In the Location list, select us (multiple regions in United States).

   Multi-regions offer higher availability and resilience, while single regions help meet strict data residency requirements. For more information, see Knowledge Catalog locations.

5. Click Create.

Build the category hierarchy

Organize your terms into a hierarchy to help users navigate your business domains. You can nest categories up to 3 levels deep. For this quickstart, consider the following categories:

• Supply Chain & Logistics: A parent category representing the overall supply chain operations.

• Inventory Levels: A sub-category used to group specific metrics and parameters related to stock management.

Create a parent category

In this section, create the category Supply Chain & Logistics.

1. On the Glossary details page for Global Retail Operations Glossary, click Create category.
2. In the Display name field, enter Supply Chain & Logistics.
3. Click Create.

Create a sub-category

In this section, create the category Inventory Levels as a subset to Supply Chain & Logistics.

1. In the left pane, under Global Retail Operations Glossary, select the Supply Chain & Logistics category.

2. In the main pane, click Create category.

3. In the Display name field, enter Inventory Levels.

4. Click Create.

Define business terms

In retail, consistent terminology is crucial for managing inventory, sales, and logistics. Define terms to capture business logic and relate them through synonyms or related terms. For this quickstart, consider the following terms:

• Safety Stock Level: Minimum inventory level kept on hand to protect against stockouts caused by unpredictable demand or supply chain disruptions. In this quickstart, this is also referred to as Buffer Stock.

• Lead Time: The time it takes from placing an order with a supplier to receiving the inventory.

Define "Safety Stock Level" as a business term

1. Select the Inventory Levels category in the left pane and click Add term.
2. In the Display name field, enter Safety Stock Level and click Create.
3. In the Terms details page, click Add for Description and enter Minimum inventory maintained to mitigate risk of stockouts during supply chain volatility.
4. Click Save.

Add "Buffer Stock" as a synonym

1. Select the Inventory Levels category in the left pane and click Add term.
2. In the Display name field, enter Buffer Stock and click Create.
3. In the Synonym terms section, click Edit synonyms.
4. Search for Safety Stock Level, select it, and click Close.

Define "Lead Time" and relate it to "Buffer Stock"

1. Select the Inventory Levels category in the left pane and click Add term.
2. In the Display name field, enter Lead Time and click Create.
3. Click Add for Description and enter The time it takes from placing an order with a supplier to receiving the inventory.
4. Click Save.
5. In the Related terms section, click Edit related terms.
6. Search for Buffer Stock, select it, and click Close.

Create a sample table in BigQuery

To attach the business terms that you created to actual data assets, first create an asset with relevant columns.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the BigQuery page.

   Go to BigQuery

2. If this is your first time using BigQuery, click Done to close the welcome window.

3. In the query editor, paste the following query to create a sample dataset and table:

   CREATE SCHEMA omnichannel_prod OPTIONS(location="us");
   CREATE TABLE omnichannel_prod.daily_stock_summary (
     sku STRING,
     buffer_qty INT64,
     order_lead_time INT64
   );
   INSERT INTO omnichannel_prod.daily_stock_summary (sku, buffer_qty, order_lead_time)
   VALUES
     ('SH001', 50, 7),
     ('BT002', 20, 14),
     ('SH003', 60, 5),
     ('BT004', 30, 10),
     ('SH005', 70, 7),
     ('BT006', 40, 12),
     ('SH007', 80, 6);
   

4. Click Run. After the query succeeds, you have a new table named daily_stock_summary in a dataset named omnichannel_prod.

Attach terms to table columns

1. In the Google Cloud console, return to the Knowledge Catalog > Search page.

   Go to search

2. Refresh the page if needed.

3. In the Search bar, enter omnichannel_prod.daily_stock_summary and press Try natural language search.

4. Click the daily_stock_summary table in the search results to view its details.

5. Click the Schema tab.

6. In the row for buffer_qty, select the checkbox, and then click Add business term.

7. In the Add business terms pane, search for and select Safety Stock Level.

8. Select the row for order_lead_time, click Add business term.

9. In the Add business terms pane, search for and select Lead Time.

Search for data using business context

Users can now find technical assets using business language.

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Knowledge Catalog > Search page.

   Go to search

2. Try the following searches to return the daily_stock_summary table:

3. In the search bar, enter term: "Safety Stock Level".

4. Click Try natural language search.

   The daily_stock_summary table appears.

5. In the search bar, enter term: "Lead Time" and press Enter.

   The daily_stock_summary table appears.

6. To find assets linked using synonym relationships, go to the Glossary page.

   Go to glossaries

7. Click Global Retail Operations Glossary.

8. On the left navigation pane, click Supply Chain & Logistics > Inventory Levels > Safety Stock Level.

   Related entries lists all linked data assets.

For large-scale glossaries, use the Knowledge Catalog Bulk Import feature to manage terms programmatically using JSON or CSV files.

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used on this page, follow these steps.

Delete project resources

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used in this quickstart, delete the glossary and dataset that you created.

Delete the glossary

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Knowledge Catalog > Glossaries page.

2. Click Global Retail Operations Glossary.

3. Delete the Supply Chain & Logistics category first.

4. Delete the Inventory Levels category.

5. Delete all the business terms.

6. Click Delete for the glossary itself.

7. Confirm your delete action.

Delete the BigQuery dataset

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the BigQuery page.

   Go to BigQuery

2. In the Explorer panel, expand your project and locate the omnichannel_prod dataset.

3. Click View actions next to the omnichannel_prod dataset and select Delete.

4. In the dialog, enter delete to confirm deletion, and click Delete.

What's next

• Learn how to search for resources in Knowledge Catalog.
• Learn more about managing business glossaries.
• Learn how to enrich entries with aspects.
• Try Knowledge Catalog use cases.