What is a data catalog?

• A. A detailed inventory of all enterprise data assets, correlating data inventories with business contexts.
• B. A directory of cloud storage regions.
• C. A registry of user permissions.
• D. A summary of data formats.

Answer: (A)

A data catalog is a centralized inventory of an organization’s data assets that links each asset to business context. It goes beyond merely listing datasets; it captures metadata about where the data lives, what it represents, how it’s used, who owns it, who’s responsible for its quality, and how it’s related to other data through lineage. This combination of technical details and business context makes data easily discoverable, understandable, and governable, supporting data discovery, governance, and self-service analytics.

The other options don’t fit as a data catalog. A directory of cloud storage regions just notes locations and doesn’t describe the datasets themselves. A registry of user permissions focuses on access control rather than cataloging data assets and their meaning. A summary of data formats only covers how data is stored or encoded, not the broader metadata, ownership, quality, and usage information that a data catalog provides.