Profiling data assets

A data asset profile includes generated metadata and statistics about its content. With such a profile, you can understand what actions to take to improve data quality. You can view the data asset profile on the asset Profile page in a catalog or in a project.

In general, all catalog or project members can see data asset profiles. However, for Watson Query and watsonx.data view assets, all users are denied access to the profiling results to prevent accidental exposure of value distributions.

In governed catalogs, profiles for data assets are created automatically unless you disabled automatic profiling, the asset comes from a connection that is configured to use personal credentials, or the asset was profiled through metadata enrichment before it was published. You can manually create profiles for structured data assets in these cases:

• In governed catalogs if the asset wasn't profiled before
• In ungoverned catalogs
• In projects

Profiles are updated when new enrichment results are published, but you can also update individual profiles manually. You can't profile unstructured data assets.

You must have the Admin or Editor role in the project or catalog to create or update a profile for a structured data asset.

To manually create a profile for a structured data asset:

1. Go to the asset Profile page. If necessary, you are prompted to enter your personal credentials for the locked data connections.

2. Optional: Click Select data classes, choose which data classes to include in the profile, and click Apply.

3. Click Create profile.

You can update an existing profile for a structured data asset when the data changes or when you want to change the data classes to include in the profile. If you exclude a data class that was previously assigned to a column, the updated profile shows Class excluded (from profile) for the respective column unless a different data class was assigned. You can also see Class excluded (from profile) for any columns where you don't have access to the assigned data class.

When you're creating or updating a catalog asset profile, the side panes for the asset columns might show outdated governance information. To see updated information, reload the page after you complete profiling.

The latest asset profile is retained and shown while the data asset exists in the catalog even if the original data in the data source is temporarily or permanently not available. To remove the profile information, you have these options:

• Manually deleting the profile on the Profile page. If the asset is subject to any data protection rules, this option is not available.

• Manually deleting the data asset from the catalog.

• Rerunning the metadata with the appropriate Delete on reimport option set if the asset was added through metadata import.