Dataplex Universal Catalog is now called Knowledge Catalog. The API, client library, CLI, and Identity and Access Management (IAM) names remain unchanged.

Feature

The lightweight profiling mode for data profile scans is available in preview.

The lightweight mode provides low-latency profile scans that return results in seconds, making it ideal for grounding AI agent responses and interactive data exploration. For more information, see Profiling modes.

You can now specify a custom execution identity for data quality and data profile scans. By default, scans are executed using the Service Agent. You can now use a custom service account (Bring Your Own Service Account) or End-User Credentials (EUC). Using a custom execution identity lets you enforce the principle of least privilege, use fine-grained BigQuery access controls, and unify scan processing costs directly under BigQuery.

For more information, see Configure execution identity for data quality scans and Configure execution identity for data profile scans.

Automated cataloging of Looker (Google Cloud core) metadata as well as data lineage ingestion from BigQuery sources are now available in preview. For more information, see the Looker (Google Cloud core) documentation.

You can now save data profile aspects in Dataplex Universal Catalog up to 1 MB in size. For more information, see Quotas and limits.

When you create a data quality rule, you can now optionally include a debug query to run alongside the rule. A debug query is a SQL statement that returns up to 10 scalar values to help diagnose rule failures. This feature is available in preview.

You can now use metadata change feeds to receive near real-time notifications about metadata changes in Dataplex. Dataplex publishes notifications to a Pub/Sub topic of your choice, letting you build event-driven workflows, sync metadata to external catalogs, or trigger data quality checks. For more information, see About metadata change feeds.

You can control data lineage ingestion for Dataproc at the organization, folder, or project level. This feature is in Preview. For more information, see Control lineage ingestion.

Some of the metadata that is stored in Dataplex Universal Catalog is changing. This change brings the metadata stored in Dataplex into consistency with metadata from the original source systems such as Vertex AI, Bigtable, Spanner, Pub/Sub, Dataform, and Dataproc Metastore. If you have workloads that depend on such Dataplex metadata, you must adjust them to preserve continuity. For more information about the scope of this change and what you need to do, see Changes to metadata stored in Dataplex Universal Catalog.

Natural language search in Dataplex Universal Catalog is generally available (GA).

Natural language search extends keyword search to support natural language queries. It lets you find resources using everyday language, eliminating the need for complex syntax.

Data products in Dataplex Universal Catalog is now available in preview.

A data product serves as a logical, curated package of data assets designed to solve a specific business problem. It enables faster time to insights and provides trust, context, and self-service access request mechanisms for data consumers. For more information, see About data products.

Previously, data profile scan results were published only to the Google Cloud console. You can now publish the results of a data profile scan as Dataplex Universal Catalog metadata. The latest results are saved to the entry that represents the source table. You can view the results in the Google Cloud console.

If you want to enable catalog publishing for an existing data profile scan, you must edit the scan and re-enable the publishing option.

For more information, see Use data profiling.

This feature is generally available (GA).

Column-level lineage is generally available (GA). The feature provides a granular view of your data by tracking the flow between individual columns within tables. You can perform functions such as root cause analysis, impact analysis, and data source verification for specific columns. Column-level lineage is only supported for BigQuery jobs. For more information about column-level lineage, see Column-level lineage.

You can now connect your Dataplex Universal Catalog instance to your favorite developer tools, such as the Gemini CLI and other IDEs. This integration enables AI-driven data discovery and asset management directly within your development environment. For more information, see Use Dataplex Universal Catalog with MCP, Gemini, and other agents.

Natural language search in Dataplex Universal Catalog is available in preview.

Natural language search extends keyword search to support natural language queries. It lets you find resources using everyday language, eliminating the need for complex syntax.

Previously, data quality scan results were published only to the Google Cloud console. You can now publish the results of a data quality scan as Dataplex Universal Catalog metadata. The latest results are saved to the entry that represents the source table. You can view the results in the Google Cloud console.

If you want to enable catalog publishing for an existing data quality scan, you must edit the scan and re-enable the publishing option.

For more information, see Use auto data quality.

This feature is generally available (GA).

Previously, Dataplex data profile scans were limited to 300 columns per BigQuery table. You can now run data profile scans on all 10,000 columns in a BigQuery table.

Bulk export of universal catalog metadata is generally available (GA).

You can export universal catalog metadata into Cloud Storage and then use it for tasks that require comprehensive retrieval of metadata. You can also query and analyze the exported metadata in BigQuery.

For more information, see Export metadata.

Custom connectors for managed connectivity pipelines are available for a variety of third-party data sources. These connectors are contributed by the community. For more information, see Community-contributed custom connectors.

You can use custom constraints with Organization Policy to provide more granular control over specific fields for some Dataplex and data lineage resources. For more information, see Manage Dataplex resources using custom constraints and Manage data lineage resources using custom constraints. This feature is generally available (GA).

Dataplex automatic discovery scans your data in Cloud Storage buckets to extract and catalog metadata, creating BigLake, external, or object tables for analytics and AI for insights, security, and governance. This feature is generally available (GA).

Encrypting Dataplex data with customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) is now available.

Dataplex Catalog has been renamed BigQuery universal catalog. You'll see this new name in the product page of the Google Cloud console, the documentation set, and the marketing collateral. Universal catalog brings together the data catalog capabilities of Dataplex Catalog and the runtime metastore capabilities of BigQuery metastore. For more information, see Introduction to data governance in BigQuery.

Dataplex and data lineage are available in the northamerica-south1 (Mexico) region.

Feature

Dataplex and data lineage are available in the europe-north2 (Stockholm) region.

Data lineage for Dataflow is generally available (GA). For more information, see Use data lineage in Dataflow.

Dataplex Attribute Store is deprecated and will be discontinued on February 18, 2026. For steps to transition to tags, policy tags, and IAM conditions, see Migrate from Attribute Store to tags and IAM conditions.

Data lineage for Dataproc Hive jobs is available in preview. For more information, see Enable Hive data lineage in Dataproc.

The ingestion of Dataplex entities (including those created as the output of Dataplex Discovery) is deprecated and will stop functioning by September 30, 2025. External tables in BigQuery that are published by Discovery will be ingested into Dataplex Catalog as entries. See Transition from Data Catalog to Dataplex Catalog.

Aspect-only metadata import for Dataplex Catalog metadata is generally available (GA). Use an aspect-only metadata job to incrementally modify aspects, without modifying other metadata that belongs to entries in the job's scope. For more information, see Import metadata using a custom pipeline.

Data lineage path visualization is available in preview. Lineage path visualizations help you to understand the lineage links between two selected resources. For more information, see Lineage path visualization.

You can now transition your Data Catalog content and usage to Dataplex Catalog. For more information, see Transition from Data Catalog to Dataplex Catalog.