Open metadata and governance is a moon-shot type of project to create an open set of 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 adapters and interchange formats to allow other metadata repositories to connect into the ecosystem.
Figure 1: Open Metadata and Governance Components implemented in Apache Atlas |
Figure 1 shows how this could look if it were implemented in Apache Atlas.
With these frameworks and APIs in place, Apache Atlas would be the reference implementation for the open metadata and governance APIs as well as offering the integration capability for the metadata cluster. Its function would be divided into different packages to allow technology partners to connect into the open metadata and governance ecosystem.
Figure 2 shows the types of usage patterns for the open metadata and governance components.
Figure 2: Open metadata and governance technology usage patterns |
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