Apache ATLAS || Part-6

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Conceptual Time

Question → What is Glossary in Apache-ATLAS ?

Answer → It basically associates the business meaning to the Entities in the ATLAS.

Question → Show, what is Glossary in general sense ?

In the General Sense: “Glossary” → A glossary is a list of terms and their definitions — like a dictionary, but usually specific to a domain. For example:

A glossary helps people across teams, projects, and companies understand the same meaning for business terms. It avoids confusion and ensures consistency. See this is how, a sample glossary looks like :-

In Apache Atlas: “Glossary” → A Glossary in Atlas is a formal way to capture and manage business vocabulary in your Data Catalog. It lets you define:

• Terms (example: Customer, Order, Revenue)
• Categories (grouping of terms)
• Relationships (link terms to data assets like Tables, Columns, Files).

Example in Atlas:

Demo Time

Glossary

Step #1.) We create the Glossary with the name as “User” from the ATLAS-UI :-

This is how it looks like, after it is created :-

Category

Step #2.) Inside the Glossary, we can now create the Category.

We wanted to create a Category named “Customer” inside this particular Glossary :-

Let’s create another Category named “Seller” inside this same Glossary named “User” :-

Step #3.) Inside a particular Category, we can also create the sub-categories too, but we shall not create any sub-category for now.

Step #4.) Let’s now create another Glossary as well with name as : “Sales” :-

Term

Step #5.) Now, we can also create the Terms, inside a particular Glossary :-

Step #6.) We create a Term named as “CustomerName” :-

After the Term is successfully created, here is how it looks like :-

Assigning Category to the Term

Step #7.) We can now associate the category (Customer) to the term (CustomerName) as well :-

After the category is being associated to the Term, here is how it looks like :-

Adding Classification to the Term

Step #8.) We can also associate the Classification (CustomerPII) to the term (CustomerName) as well. Note below that, we have chosen the type of classification as “Propagate” which means that, this classification shall be propagated.

After the classification is being attached to the Term, here is how it looks like :-

Let’s also associate one more Classification (“Dimension”) to this Term (“CustomerName”) but this would not be propagated :-

After this specific classification is being attached to this Term, here is how it looks like :-

Adding Terms to the Entities

Step #9.) We shall now associate the Term to the existing Entities in our system.

• Here, the “name” is one entity (i.e. Instance i.e. Object) of the Type: Column, that exists in our system.
• We shall associate the Term to this Column.

So far, we have only one Term named “CustomerName” and let’s associate this term to the afore-shown entity.

Once this term (CustomerName) is assigned successfully to this Entity (name) :-

• Below is how the view of the entity looks like.
• Also note that, this entity have also got a propagated-classification with name as “CustomerPII”. Visit to Step #8 where we associated the classification (CustomerPII) with the Term (CustomerName).

Ease of Search for this Entity

Step #10.) Now that, the classification (CustomerPII) exists with this entity (name), therefore it is quite easy to search from the ATLAS-UI.

Additional Term

Step #11.) Now, let’s create a new additional Term, this time, inside the “Sales” Glossary :-

Step #12.) We create a Term named as “salesPrice” :-

After the Term is successfully created, here is how it looks like :-

That’s all about the glossary in this blog that we wanted to show. If you liked reading it, please do clap on it.