What is Data Lineage?
Data lineage refers to maintaining a record of the origin, movement, and processing history of data from its birth to usage. It provides a complete audit trail tracing data as it is transformed, combined, and propagated across systems.
What is Data Lineage
Data lineage captures essential metadata like:
- Where the data originated from
- How it flows between databases, processes, analytics
- Who or what algorithms have accessed/modified it
- The sequence of operations performed on the data
- Think of data lineage as a breadcrumb trail documenting the full lifecycle journey of data as it gets created, consumed, enriched, archived, or deleted.
What is Data Lineage? – Defintion, Tools and Examples
With data increasingly powering key business decisions, understanding data lineage has become crucial for trust and transparency. Data lineage isn’t just a fancy term; it’s a powerful tool that acts like a detailed roadmap for a specific piece of data. It tracks the data’s entire journey, from its very origin to its final destination and every transformation it undergoes along the way.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of what is data lineage, its use cases, benefits, best practices, and tools to establish end-to-end visibility into your data supply chain.
Table of Content
- What is Data Lineage?
- Why is Data Lineage Important?
- How Data Lineage Works?
- Challenges in Tracking Data Lineage
- 1. Metadata-Based Lineage
- 2. Automated Lineage Tracing
- Best Practices for Data Lineage
- Data Lineage Tools
- Data Lineage Techniques and Examples
- Why Businesses Invest in Data Lineage?
- Data Lineage Applications
- Data Lineage vs. Data Provenance vs. Data Governance
- FAQs on Data Lineage
Contact Us