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Open metadata and governance is a moon-shot type of project to create an open a set of open APIs, types and interchange protocols to allow all metadata repositories to share and exchange metadata.  From this common base, it adds governance, discovery and access frameworks to automate the collection, management and use of metadata across an enterprise.  The result is an enterprise catalog of data resources that are transparently assessed, governed and used in order to deliver maximum value to the enterprise.

Delivering this capability as open source is a critical part of the project since multiple vendors must buy into this ecosystem.  They are not going to do this if one organization dominates the technology base.  Thus the open metadata and governance technology must be freely available with an open source governance model that allows a community of organizations and practitioners to develop and evolve the base and then use it in their offerings and deployments.

The proposal is to use Apache Atlas as the open source reference implementation for open metadata and governance.  Apache Alas would support an open metadata and governance compliant repository plus provide the To this end, the open metadata standards and core implementation is being developed through the Egeria ODPi open source project (https://github.com/odpi/egeria).  This provides the APIs, adapters and interchange formats to allow other metadata repositories to connect into the ecosystem. 

The open metadata and governance project is divided into the following pieces:

• Common types for open metadata - these types are built from the Apache Atlas type system and define the types stored in the graph database as well as payloads for notifications and APIs
• Open Metadata Repository Services (OMRS) - Open metadata repository APIs and notifications to enable metadata repositories to exchange metadata in a peer-to-peer metadata repository cluster.
• Open Metadata Access Services (OMAS) - Consumer-centric APIs and notifications for specific classes of tools and applications.  The OMAS services call the OMRS to access metadata from any open metadata repository.
• New frameworks to complement the Atlas Hooks and Bridges
  • Open Connector Framework (OCF) - provides factories for connectors with access APIs for data resources and metadata together.  The OMRS is also built as a set of metadata repository connectors and the OMAS services use the OCF to connect to the appropriate OMRS connector.
  • Open Discovery Framework (ODF) - provides management for automated processes and analytics to analyze the content of data resources and update the metadata about this
  • Governance Action Framework (GAF) - provides governance enforcement services for implementing enforcement points in data engines, security managers such as Apache Ranger and APIs.
• Open Metadata Graph Repository - A set of stores to complement the graph database at the heart of the open metadata and governance service.  These stores provide detailed logs and related information that is linked to by the graph but with cost efficient formats and access mechanisms.
• Open Lineage Services - Services for collecting and querying lineage information across multiple heterogeneous metadata repositories

Figure 1 shows how this could look if it were implemented in Apache Atlas.

Integrating into the Open Metadata and Governance Ecosystem

With these frameworks and APIs in place, Apache Atlas becomes the reference implementation for the open metadata and governance APIs as well as offering the integration capability for the metadata cluster.   Its function is divided into different packages to allow technology partners to connect into the open metadata and governance ecosystem.   The integration options are described here.

Apache Atlas provides the open source reference implementation for a native open metadata repository.

To understand more about the aims of the Egeria project see: https://github.com/odpi/egeria/blob/master/open-metadata-publication/website/README.md 

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