data analyticsThe new critical area of business intelligence is to collect and manage large amounts of data to assist your company with making better decisions. Today data is collected on an up to the minute basis and key decisions are made based on a company being able to read and respond to the data.

Because data collection and analysis has become so important companies have created internal departments to manage the vast amounts of data. Additionally, industries have been created that provide data collection and dissemination services.

In terms of accurate collection and analysis of the vast amounts of information, data lineage is an important aspect of data collection and retrieval. It is critical for effectively utilizing data from databases particularly big data. For this reason mastering data lineage is paramount. The best organizations will opt for a top data lineage tool that can manage this process no matter how complex it becomes and the goals of the organization or client. To understand why they invest in bringing on these professionals here is a description of data lineage and its role in data management.

Understanding Data Lineage

Data lineage is the origination and changes that data goes through over time. It also describes data’s movements, characteristics, and quality. The concept of data lineage is often compared to an origin chart or a family ancestry tree where relationships flow from relationships and are connected to those who came previously.

This ancestry structure is the foundation for data lineage. Knowing where something comes from, in this case data, allows for greater understanding and control over many elements of that data. You can also understand the characteristics of the data and how it was intended to be used and it can be utilized to track and discover errors.

Why Data Lineage needs to be Tracked

Although the process of locating data seems like it would be straightforward because of a lineage structure, it can often be difficult to locate because of the complexity of the trees and the sheer amount of data. If you consider the amount of data that large organizations now keep handy and need to utilize when making purchasing, product and service, marketing, and customer care decisions, you can get an idea of the amount of data a company deals with regularly.

When you include that much of the data is coming from outside sources and interacting with data gathered by a company you get the full sense of the complexities in data management today and why data lineage needs to be tracked so closely.

Departments in companies charged with tracking data and companies that manage data as a business have a great need for data lineage tracking tools that can help them to make sense of and keep on top of the large amounts of data collected. This is again why they turn to professional organizations that provide the best and most user friendly data lineage tools.

Data collection and management sits at the heart of business success today. For this reason employing the best tools and strategies will help a company to be successful