Explore data assets lineage
Trace the upstream sources and downstream consumers of a data asset. Open the lineage view in Graph Explorer to examine specific relationships, focus on a path, and review related asset details.
Before you begin
Role required: WDF Consumer (wdf_consumer)
About this task
Graph Explorer is a visual tool in the Data Catalog for exploring how data assets and business concepts are connected. Graph Explorer has two views: Relationships shows direct semantic, conceptual, and governance connections among assets; Lineage shows the directed upstream and downstream flow of data.
The lineage view displays upstream sources, downstream consumers, and the relationships that connect them, at both the table level and the column level. It supports four primary use cases:
- Impact analysis and change management. Identify the downstream reports, dashboards, models, and datasets that depend on a data asset before you modify or deprecate it.
- Root cause analysis. Trace upstream from a problematic asset to find where a data quality issue originated, whether in a source system, a transformation, or a join.
- Data discovery and understanding. Assess an asset's context and reliability by examining its sources and consumers.
Each asset's Overview tab includes a Graph Explorer section with side-by-side previews for Relationships and Lineage. The full visualization opens in a new tab and contains both views.
The lineage diagram has a sidebar that lists every asset, grouped by direction (Upstream, Lineage Target, Downstream, Ignored) and by degree of separation. The graph shows each asset as a node, with edges representing lineage relationships. An axis indicates the degree of separation for each column, from upstream to downstream. When multiple relationships connect the same two assets, the edge shows a numbered badge with the count of bundled relationships.