Solutions Review’s listing of the best data catalog tools and software is an annual sneak peek of the top tools included in our Buyer’s Guide for Metadata Management and Data Cataloging Tools. Information was gathered via online materials and reports, conversations with vendor representatives, and examinations of product demonstrations and free trials.
The editors at Solutions Review have developed this resource to assist buyers in search of the best data catalog tools to fit the needs of their organization. Choosing the right vendor and solution can be a complicated process — one that requires in-depth research and often comes down to more than just the solution and its technical capabilities. To make your search a little easier, we’ve profiled the best data catalog tools and software all in one place. We’ve also included platform and product line names and introductory software tutorials straight from the source so you can see each solution in action.
Note: The best data catalog tools are listed in alphabetical order.
The Best Data Catalog Tools
Aginity
Tool: Aginity Pro
Related products: Aginity Team
Description: Aginity offers an active analytics catalog that lets users and organizations write, save and organize their analytic code. When saving code to a catalog, developers can put a title, description and other metadata around their code so it’s easy to understand the intent and context of what the code is trying to do. All of the analytic code can then be shared with others by providing either view or edit access. Every object saves in the catalog is an object that can be referenced in the code editor for execution with simple syntax.
Alation
Tool: Alation Data Catalog
Description: Alation Data Catalog helps you find, understand, and govern all enterprise data through a single pane of glass. The product uses machine learning to index and make discoverable a wide variety of data sources including relational databases, cloud data lakes, and file systems. Alation democratizes data to deliver quick access alongside metadata to guide compliant, intelligent data usage with vital context. Conversations and wiki-like articles capture knowledge and guide newcomers to the appropriate subject-matter expert. The intelligent SQL editor empowers users to query in natural language, surfacing recommendations, compliance flags, and relevant policies as users query.
Alex Solutions
Tool: Alex Data Marketplace
Related products: Alex Scanner Marketplace
Description: Alex Solutions is a technology agnostic unified enterprise data catalog. It features a business glossary that enables users to define and maintain key business terms and link them to physical data assets, processes, and outputs. Policy-driven data quality combines data lineage with data profiling and machine learning-based intelligent tagging. Alex also offers intelligent tagging that helps users add business context to physical data assets. Deployment and integration are simple, and the product’s user interface is friendly to business users.
Alteryx
Tool: Alteryx Connect
Related products: Alteryx Designer, Alteryx Server, Alteryx Promote
Description: Alteryx data cataloging is available through Alteryx Connect. The product centralizes business terms and definitions, metrics, and information assets for discoverability and collaboration. Connect lets users discover the types of information their data contains, where the information comes from, who is using it, and how it is used. The tool features powerful search to find and reuse information in analytic apps, workflows, macros, visualizations, dashboards, and data science models as well.
Cambridge Semantics
Tool: Anzo
Description: Cambridge Semantics offers a data discovery and integration platform called Anzo that lets users find, connect and blend data. Anzo connects to both internal and external data sources including cloud or on-prem data lakes. The product also features data cataloging that utilizes graph models encoding a Semantic Layer that describes data in a business context. Users can add Data Layers for data cleansing, transformation, semantic model alignment, relationship linking, and access control as well.
Collibra
Tool: Collibra Catalog
Related products: Collibra Platform, Collibra Privacy & Risk
Description: Collibra’s Data Dictionary documents an organization’s technical metadata and how it is used. It describes the structure of a piece of data, its relationship to other data, and its origin, format, and use. The solution serves as a searchable repository for users who need to understand how and where data is stored and how it can be used. Users can also document roles and responsibilities and utilize workflows to define and map data. Collibra is unique because the product was built with business end-users in mind.
Cloudera
Tool: Cloudera Navigator
Related products: Cloudera Data Platform, Cloudera Data Catalog
Description: Cloudera Navigator is a data governance solution for Hadoop that provides data discovery, continuous optimization, audit, lineage, metadata management, and policy enforcement. The product lets users explore and tag data through a search-based interface. Navigator consolidates metadata and supports custom tags and comments as well, and it’s easy to track, classify, and locate data to comply with business governance and compliance. Cloudera Navigator is a part of Cloudera Enterprise.
data.world
Tool: data.world
Description: data.world offers a cloud-native enterprise data catalog that provides complete context so users can understand their data, regardless of where it resides. This includes metadata, dashboards, analysis, code, docs, project management, and social media collaboration capabilities. The product automatically builds a connected web of data and insights so users can explore relationships as well, and provides recommendations on related assets to improve analysis. data.world is unique due to its continuous release cycle.
Denodo
Tool: Denodo Platform
Description: Denodo is a major player in the data management software market. The award-winning Denodo Platform offers a robust capabilities package for data integration, data management, and data delivery using a logical approach to enable self-service business intelligence, data science, hybrid/multi-cloud integration, and enterprise data services. Denodo touts customers across large enterprises and mid-market companies in over 30 industries. A pioneering company in the data virtualization space, Denodo was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1999.
erwin
Tool: erwin Data Catalog
Related products: erwin Data Intelligence Suite, erwin Data Governance, erwin Data Literacy, erwin EDGE Portfolio
Description: erwin offers a unified software platform for combining data governance, enterprise architecture, business process, and data modeling. The product is delivered as a managed service that allows users to discover and harvest data, as well as structure and deploy data sources by connecting physical metadata to specific business terms and definitions. erwin imports metadata from data integration tools, as well as cloud-based platforms, and can evaluate complex lineages across systems and use cases.
IBM
Tool: Watson Knowledge Catalog
Related products: IBM InfoSphere Information Server, IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog
Description: IBM Watson Catalog provides AI-assisted self-service discovery of data, machine learning models and more. The product lets users access, curate, categorize and share data, knowledge assets and their relationships, regardless of where the data resides. Key capabilities include real-time data virtualization support, automated metadata generation, dynamic data masking, and automated scanning and risk assessments of unstructured data via Watson Knowledge Catalog InstaScan.
Infogix
Tool: Infogix Data360 Govern
Description: Infogix offers a suite of integrated data governance capabilities that include business glossaries, data cataloging, data lineage, and metadata management. The tool also provides customizable dashboards and zero-code workflows that adapt as each organizational data capability matures. Reference customers use Infogix for data governance and for risk, compliance and data value management. The product is also flexible and easy to use, and supports smaller data analysis jobs as well.
Informatica
Tool: Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog
Related products: Informatica Intelligent Data Platform, Informatica Metadata Manager, Informatica Business Glossary, Informatica Secure@Source
Description: Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog is a machine learning-based data catalog that lets you classify and organize data assets across any environment. The product also provides a metadata system of record for the enterprise. Enterprise Data Catalog automatically scans and catalogs data, indexing it for organization-wide discovery via a Google-like search engine. Key features include data provisioning, end-to-end data lineage, integrated data quality, data relationships and recommendations, and even a Tableau extension.
Oracle
Tool: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Catalog
Related products: Oracle Enterprise Metadata Management
Description: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Catalog is a metadata management service that helps organizations find and govern data using an organized inventory of data assets. The product features a modern, intuitive user interface that includes a simple dashboard, search-and-browse capabilities, recommended actions, and shortcuts. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Catalog is included with an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure subscription.
Qlik
Tool: Qlik Catalog (Qlik Data Catalyst)
Related products: QlikView, Qlik Sense, Qlik Data Integration Platform
Description: Qlik Catalog builds a secure, enterprise catalog of all the data your organization has available for analytics, regardless of its physical location. The product features automated data preparation and metadata tools to streamline the transformation of raw data as well. The tool includes a self-service data marketplace that lets users “shop” for the data they need and export, share or automatically publish data sets to Qlik Sense and other analytic tools and applications.
SAP
Tool: SAP Data Intelligence
Related products: SAP Data Warehouse Cloud
Description: SAP Data Intelligence is an AI-powered data management solution that includes data orchestration, machine learning, and metadata management. The product lets users discover and connect multiple data types regardless of where they reside physically, as well as refine and reuse audio, image, and video streams and data from devices based on the IoT. Users can optimize governance and compliance with built-in metadata management rules, and orchestrate modular data pipelines across distributed architectures.
Tableau Software
Tool: Tableau Catalog
Related products: Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online, Tableau Prep, Tableau Data Management
Description: Tableau Catalog provides a complete picture of the data and how it is connected to the analytics in the Tableau environment. The product automatically ingests all of these assets into one central list so users can quickly see all the tables, files and databases in one place. Metadata and context is made available when data is connected so users can ensure they are using the correct data for analysis. Metadata and REST APIs bring the metadata to Tableau for analysis.
Talend
Tool: Talend Data Catalog
Related products: Talend Open Studio, Talend Data Fabric, Talend Data Management Platform, Talend Data Preparation, Talend Big Data Platform, Talend Data Services Platform, Talend Integration Cloud, Talend Stitch Data Loader
Description: Talend Data Catalog automatically crawls, profiles, organizes, links, and enriches metadata. Up to 80 percent of information associated with the data is documented automatically and kept up-to-date through smart relationships and machine learning. Data Catalog key features include faceted search, data sampling, semantic discovery. categorization, and auto-profiling. The tool also includes social curation and data relationship discovery and certification, as well as a suite of design and productivity tools.
Zaloni
Tool: Zaloni Arena
Description: Zaloni Arena operationalizes data along the entire pipeline, from data source to consumer. The product automates repeatable data management tasks and processes and provides central management of all enterprise data sources whether on-prem, cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid. Zaloni is compatible with all major Hadoop distributions, most data processing engines, and applicable deployment models.