Creating a catalog

Enforcing data protection rules

Data protection rules apply to all governed catalogs and all assets within these catalogs. Data protection rules are automatically enforced when a catalog member attempts to view or act on a data asset in a governed catalog to prevent unauthorized users from accessing sensitive data.

However, if the user who is trying to access the asset is the owner of the asset (by default, the user who created the asset), then access is always granted. See Data Protection Rules.

Duplicate asset handling

When assets are added to a catalog, it can happen that an asset with a duplicate already exists in the catalog. You can specify what action should be taken in such a case. The choices you have are determined by the catalog default setting. Find out how you can specify duplicate asset handling in Handling duplicate assets in catalogs.

Asset removal

When you create a new catalog, you can decide how you want to configure removing assets. You can either select to purge the assets automatically from the trash and get them permanently deleted immediately after the removal or 30 days after the removal, in which case the assets remain in the trash for the next 30 days and you can restore them if needed.

All previously created catalogs have Never purge assets option selected by default. You can change this setting to any other of the purge options on the catalog Settings page.

Watch this short video to see how to create a catalog and find assets fast.

This video provides a visual method to learn the concepts and tasks in this documentation.

• Transcript
  Synchronize transcript with video

  Video transcript

  Time	Transcript
  00:00	This video shows you how to create a catalog and find assets quickly with Watson Knowledge Catalog.
  00:08	From the home page, you can access the catalogs.
  00:13	Now, create a new catalog and provide a name and a description.
  00:21	A catalog contains metadata about the contents of assets and how to access them, and a set of collaborators who need to use the assets for data analysis.
  00:32	The metadata is stored in an encrypted IBM Cloud Object Storage instance.
  00:37	Any data that you want to store in the cloud you can upload to the Cloud Object Storage of your choice and then specify that object storage when you create the catalog.
  00:48	This split between where the data's metadata is stored and the actual location of the data is important.
  00:54	It means that you can keep your data wherever it is.
  00:57	You don't need to move it into the catalog, because the catalog only contains metadata.
  01:03	You can have the data in on-premises data repositories, in other IBM Cloud services like Cloudant or Db2 on Cloud, in non-IBM cloud services like Amazon or Azure, in streaming data services, or even dark data sources like PDS.
  01:23	Included in the metadata, is how to access the data asset; in other words: the location and credentials.
  01:31	That means that anyone who is a member of the catalog and has sufficient permissions can get to the data without knowing the credentials or having to create their own connection to the data.
  01:45	If you don't have an Object Storage instance, you can create one right from here.
  01:51	When you create a catalog, you can enforce data policies.
  01:56	If you enable data policies now, you can't disable it later.
  02:02	Now, you're ready to create the catalog.
  02:07	Since the new catalog is empty, let's take a look at an existing catalog.
  02:12	On the "Browse assets" tab, you can see recommendations, highly rated assets, and recently created assets, as well as a list of all the assets.
  02:26	You can type a search term to find assets.
  02:29	And you can filter by asset type, such as "Data asset" or "Notebook", or filter by tags that were assigned to the asset when it was added to the catalog.
  02:42	When you view an asset, the "Overview" tab provides basic information about the asset, such as the description, a rating, tags, where the asset is located, business terms, and any classifications.
  03:00	The "Asset" tab provides a preview of the data.
  03:05	On the "Access" tab, those with permission can add members to view this particular asset.
  03:12	And the "Review" tab shows reviews and lets you contribute a review.
  03:19	When assets are added to a catalog with data policies enabled, Watson Knowledge Catalog automatically profiles and classifies the content of the asset based on the values in those columns.
  03:32	The "Profile" tab contains more detailed information about the inferred classifications.
  03:38	On the "Activities" tab, you'll see the various events that Watson Knowledge Catalog has captured that occurred in the life cycle of this data asset, allowing you to trace what's happened to the asset since it was created.
  03:54	Go back to the catalog and on the "Access control" tab, you can see the current list of catalog members.
  04:02	You can also add members, which is pretty similar to adding collaborators in a project.
  04:08	Most catalog members will likely have the "Editor" role.
  04:12	The "Viewer" role is intentionally restricted.
  04:15	And only a select few will have the "Admin" role.
  04:19	You can also add an access group that you previously defined in your IBM Cloud account and provide the group with the specified access to the catalog.
  04:30	This is an easy way to give many users "Viewer" access.
  04:35	And on the "Settings" tab, you can edit the catalog name and description, and see other important information about the Cloud Object Storage associated with this catalog.
  04:49	Find more videos in the Cloud Pak for Data as a Service documentation.

You can also create a catalog by using the Watson Data API. See Create a catalog with the Watson Data API.