Databases can help your business answer more business questions, but they aren’t the only solution. You can use automated data curation features that use AI and machine learning to identify similarities between data assets, assign business terms to technical metadata, and track the flow of data through pipelines and systems. These features help you make better decisions about data assets and reduce bottlenecks within your organization. You can also use pre-built reports and dashboards to analyze data usage and collaboration. And you can build knowledge graphs that help you identify relationships among data assets.

Modern data catalogs are flexible and open by design, and many automatically sort data by relevance and frequency of viewing. They can be connected to BI tools and analytics platforms to create a single data source that enables self-service access for any user (more). This is a key benefit, because it helps eliminate data silos, allows data scientists to use data quickly and consistently, and increases the productivity of data teams.

Data catalogs also offer a data governance solution. They can help protect sensitive data by ensuring that only the right people have access to specific data sets. They can also integrate metadata from various databases and create profiles for data consumers. These tools also create links and relationships between data, making query results more robust.