Introducing the new OneLake catalog: Your central hub for data discovery, management, and governance
In the ever-evolving landscape of data management and analytics, Microsoft Fabric continues to lead the way, with innovative solutions that empower data professionals and decision-makers alike. Today, we are announcing the OneLake catalog, the next development of the OneLake data hub. With the catalog we’re introducing a suite of powerful enhancements that will transform the way you manage, explore, and utilize content in Fabric.
A unified experience
The new OneLake catalog is designed as the central place for data engineers, data scientists, analysts, and decision-makers to browse, manage, and govern all their data from a single, intuitive location. That’s why the catalog doesn’t just include familiar data item types from the OneLake data hub, like lakehouses, warehouses, and semantic models. Instead, OneLake catalog now grants access to the full spectrum of item types in Fabric. This includes the most popular insight item types (preview): dashboards and reports, as well as the full range of configuration, solution, and process item types, all in one place.
In-place data management
Everything in the OneLake catalog is contextual. You can view and manage any item from within the catalog itself, without needing to navigate out to different experiences, or open an item’s editor. This simplifies the navigation and management of your data ecosystem, making your work in Fabric more efficient.
Streamlined for collaboration
Discovering content is a breeze with the OneLake catalog. Business users can easily find reports and dashboards to answer their questions, while analysts can access data items and processes for further analysis and insights. For any task, you can seamlessly navigate through the domains and subdomains of your organization’s data mesh, discovering items you own, endorsed items, or your favorites with ease.
First scope the catalog to a specific domain and subdomain, for example, Finance -> EMEA. Then use additional filtering and searching capabilities to drill down to the right content. You can filter the items in the catalog by category; Data (e.g., lakehouses, warehouses), Insights (e.g., reports, dashboards), Processes (e.g., pipelines, notebooks), Solutions (e.g., Health), and Configurations (e.g., Environment). In addition, you can filter by tags, endorsement, specific workspace, and more, to find exactly what you need—quickly and efficiently.
In-depth item metadata
Viewing item metadata, including description, tags, and data tables and views, has never been easier. Click on any item in the OneLake catalog and you’ll see relevant information upfront to help you understand it better. For your data item types, the OneLake catalog lets you directly explore the data schema, providing a granular view into your items’ objects and contents that enables better insight and control over your data assets.
Unified management for your items
The OneLake catalog brings together crucial functionalities—such as cross-workspace item lineage, access permissions for internal and external users and shares, and monitoring for real-time activities, refreshes, and runs—at an item level and within one cohesive interface. This makes governance and management tasks easier and more accessible for every user.
Data exploration made easy
Once you’ve found the right data, you can perform ad-hoc data explorations on your items from within the OneLake catalog, helping you to gain fresh insights, and take data driven business decisions.
Governance for your individual data estate (coming soon)
We’ll soon introduce as public preview a centralized data governance experience in the OneLake catalog.
In this tab, data owners can view aggregated insights on the items they created, consider improving their governance by taking recommended actions, and access more information along with all available tools in Fabric. This functionality set facilitates data creators in ensuring their items are secure and compliant with organizational policies.
Ready for your use across 40+ scenarios
The OneLake catalog supports more than 40 scenarios where users connect to data within Fabric. This ensures that users can seamlessly and consistently discover, access and reuse existing items rather than creating new ones. Moreover, OneLake catalog is also available in services and applications outside of Fabric service application like Power BI Desktop, where it allows users to connect to data effortlessly, and Azure Ibiza. Soon the OneLake catalog will also be accessible in Excel, further expanding its reach and utility.
In summary
The new OneLake catalog is the next evolution of the OneLake hub, and it’s crafted to offer a more unified, contextual, and comprehensive data management experience. By expanding support to all Fabric item types, integrating experiences, and providing detailed views of data subitems, the OneLake catalog streamlines data discovery and management, making it more efficient and intuitive.
We invite you to explore it for yourselves and experience the ease and power it brings to your day-to-day work in Fabric.
