With global asset identification, you can ensure that the common properties of data assets that have the same resource key and reference the same physical resource stay the same even if they're in different projects or catalogs. This way, you can manage such data assets properly and consistently.
As a result, if versions of the same data assets exist in different catalogs or projects that are accessed by various data consumers, each user has the same information about the data asset.
For data assets in catalogs, when a common property is updated for such a data asset in a catalog, this update is propagated on all published data assets with the same resource key in different catalogs.
For data assets in projects, when a common property is updated for such a data asset in a catalog, this update is propagated on all data assets with the same resource key that are not being edited. When a common property for a data asset in a project is updated, but it’s not published yet, the common properties of such data asset are not updated in published catalogs until the data asset is published from the project to a catalog.
Common properties aren’t automatically updated for data assets that are already in deployment spaces.
Limitations
Global asset identification cannot be used for the following types of data assets:
- Data assets that represent uploaded local files.
- Data assets that are filtered by SQL Query. For example, data assets of the
Querytype. - Data assets that do not have a resource key.
Automatically updated common properties
The following is the list of properties that are updated automatically for all data assets with the same resource key in catalogs and unedited copies of the asset in projects.
- Description
- Directly assigned terms, classifications, and data classes at the asset and, or column level
- Tags
- Ratings and reviews
- Asset membership (asset owners, asset editors, and asset viewers)
Other properties that you can specify for data assets, such as asset name, asset privacy settings, or asset relationships, are reference properties and they might have different values in different projects or catalogs. These properties are not automatically updated with global asset identification.
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Parent topic: Catalogs