Solutions Review’s listing of the best metadata management tools 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 metadata management 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 Metadata Management tools and solutions 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 metadata management tools are listed in alphabetical order.
The Best Metadata Management Tools
Alation
Platform: 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
Platform: 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.
ASG Technologies
Platform: ASG Enterprise Data Intelligence
Description: ASG Technologies offers a data intelligence platform that can discover data from more than 220 traditional and big data sources. The tool features automated data tagging by pattern matching, integration of reference data, and enriched metrics. Automated business linage allows users to better understand their data, and governance capabilities include those for tracing data in the data lake and traditional sources. ASG’s EDI product offers an impressive capabilities portfolio, with reference customers touting the vendor’s support for a variety of business use cases.
Collibra
Platform: Collibra Platform
Related products: Collibra Catalog, 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.
erwin
Platform: erwin EDGE Portfolio
Related products: erwin Data Governance, erwin Data Intelligence, erwin Data Literacy, erwin Data Catalog
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
Platform: IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Related products: IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog, Watson Knowledge Catalog
Description: IBM’s InfoSphere Information Server features a metadata repository that stores metadata from suite tools and external tools and databases and enables sharing among them. Users can import metadata into the repository from multiple sources, export metadata by various methods, and transfer metadata between design, test, and production repositories. Changes that are made in the repository are automatically made throughout the suite, and uses standard relational database technology.
Infogix
Platform: 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
Platform: Informatica Metadata Manager
Related products: Informatica Intelligent Data Platform, Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog, Informatica Business Glossary, Informatica Secure@Source
Description: Informatica Metadata Management allows enterprises to tap into four major categories of data, including technical, database schemas, mappings and code, business (glossary terms, governance processes), operational and infrastructure (run-time stats and time stamps), and usage (user ratings and comments). Informatica creates a knowledge graph of an organization’s data assets and their relationships by applying AI and machine learning. Active metadata serves as the foundation for Informatica’s Intelligent Data Platform.
MANTA
Platform: MANTA Platform
Description: MANTA offers a unified data lineage platform that maps all information flows to provide a complete overview of your data pipeline. The product reveals the data’s origins and its journey through all data processing systems to you. MANTA automatically updates lineage whenever necessary and shows data flows in a way that is user-friendly, clear, and understandable. The solution was designed to be integrated into any data management ecosystem as well.
Octopai
Platform: Octopai Platform
Related products: Octopai Automated Data Discovery, Octopai Automated Data Lineage, Octopai Automated Business Glossary
Description: Octopai is a centralized, cross-platform metadata management automation solution that enables data and analytics teams to discover and govern shared metadata. The product does metadata scanning by automatically gathering it from ETL, databases, and reporting tools. Metadata is stored and managed in a central repository, and a smart engine using hundreds of crawlers searches all metadata and presents results quickly. Octopai is best used for use cases in business intelligence, governance, and data cataloging.
Oracle
Platform: Oracle Enterprise Metadata Management
Related products: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Catalog
Description: Oracle Enterprise Metadata Management is a metadata management platform that can harvest and catalog metadata from any provider. The product allows for interactive searching and browsing of the metadata as well as providing data lineage, impact analysis, semantic definition and semantic usage analysis for any metadata asset within the catalog. Oracle Enterprise Metadata Management also touts advanced algorithms that stitch together metadata assets from each of the providers.
OvalEdge
Platform: OvalEdge
Description: OvalEdge offers an on-prem data catalog and governance toolset that crawls databases, data lakes and back-end systems to create a smart catalog of the information. The product provides a discovery platform that both novice and experienced analysts can use to discover data quickly. OvalEdge includes built-in governance tools that help define a standard business glossary, data assets, PIIs and limits access by various roles. It also organizes data automatically via machine learning and advanced algorithms.
SAP
Platform: SAP PowerDesigner
Related products: SAP Information Steward, SAP Data Intelligence
Description: SAP offers its metadata management capabilities via SAP PowerDesigner, SAP Information Steward, and SAP Data Intelligence. SAP utilizes metadata integration for multiple DBMS platforms, across the SAP ecosystem, with available integrators for BI platforms, data modeling solutions, and other data integration software. Users can ingest metadata from other tools to create reporting and monitoring systems for data migration and data valuation as well. Metadata discovery data modeling and scenario analysis are available via SAP Data Intelligence.
Smartlogic
Platform: Smartlogic Semaphore
Description: Semaphore is an enterprise-grade semantic platform that allows organizations to enrich data, extract facts, and harmonize information sources. The product features a model-driven, rule-based approach that enhances the capabilities of existing technologies. Smartlogic allows users to drive self-service delivery as well as move enterprise search from keyword to semantic to find data related to a query. Smartlogic is known for its excellent modeling, metadata transformation, and creation capabilities.
