Data Discovery

Top-level UI section for the catalog's two entry paths — query-oriented Search and hierarchy-oriented Directory — surfaced together on the Catalog Overview page.

The Data Discovery section of ODD Platform is the home for finding entities in the catalog. The role is durable: anything that helps a user locate existing data — by typing a term, by walking a known structure, or by landing on the home page — belongs here. The section sits at the operator-and-user front door: most catalog interactions begin with one of the two entry paths surfaced from this pillar.

ODD covers Data Discovery fully — both entry paths ship today, and the platform's home page renders them side by side as the catalog's first-encounter view. See the Data Governance map for the position of Data Discovery in the overall pillar set.

Open it from the top-level navigation Catalog (Search-first landing) or Directory (hierarchy-first level-1 view). The Catalog Overview page surfaces both entry paths inline.

Catalog Search results — entity-class tabs along the top (All / My Objects / Datasets / Transformers / Data Consumers / Data Inputs / Quality Tests / Groups / Relationships) with per-class counts; the Filters left-rail exposes Datasource / Namespace / Owner / Groups / Statuses facets. The result list shows mixed entity classes (LOOKUP_TABLE, ENTITY_RELATIONSHIP, DEG, DATASET, TRANSFORMER) — search and faceted filtering are how operators move from "I want a user-related entity" to a specific row.

Subsections

The catalog's two entry paths plus the per-feature surfaces that mark up, classify, and signal freshness on the entities they reach.

Discovery entry paths

• Catalog Overview page — the catalog's home page. A unified surface that combines Search, the Directory's level-1 cards, Top tags, Domains, the per-class Entities report, the Recommended quick-jumps, and (when authentication is on) the Owner-association request. Most catalog sessions start here.

• Directory — the catalog's browse-oriented entry point. Four-level drill-down (data source types → data sources → entity types → entities) backed by /api/directory. Use it when you know the kind of source but not the specific instance, when you're auditing per-source coverage, or when you're walking a teammate through the catalog.

• Search and Filtering — the catalog's query-oriented entry point. Free-text search across entity names plus seven facets (Datasource / Type / Namespace / Owner / Tag / Groups / Statuses). The query-driven counterpart to the Directory.

Per-entity detail surface

• Data entity detail page — the destination of every catalog discovery. Covers the Overview tab composition, the class-driven panel matrix that decides which panels and tabs appear, the class/type badges in the header, the sidebar list truncation (Tags / Terms / Groups), and the per-panel permission map. The container surface that the annotation features below render onto.

Annotating discovered entities

• Entity description — operator-authored Markdown description on every data entity. The primary free-text annotation surface; rendered on the Overview tab and surfaced as the preview snippet on search-result rows, Recommended-tile cards, and Directory-level-4 entity rows. Carries a load-bearing security caveat on the platform's no-write-time-sanitisation posture across six Markdown surfaces.

• Custom metadata — operator-curated typed key/value fields per data entity, plus the deployment-shared field catalogue that backs the autocomplete picker. Covers the seven supported field types, INTERNAL versus EXTERNAL (collector-ingested) origin, and four load-bearing caveats (silent no-op write, dropped active flag, unauthenticated catalogue enumeration, forensic silence on mutations).

• Per-column annotation — the column-level counterparts to the entity-level annotation surfaces on a dataset's Structure tab — description, tags, glossary terms, enum values, and business name editors per column. Covers the per-sub-editor permissions, the audit-feed events each sub-editor emits, and three operator-visible write-path caveats (a SecurityConstants wiring bug that silently 403s the field-level Add-term button for users with the documented permission, a bulk-replace enum-values endpoint disguised as create-one, and a tags PUT that silently clears every operator-curated tag on empty submission).

• Manual Object Tagging — apply tags to data entities and columns; the read-side counterpart to the Management → Tags vocabulary curation. Tags drive the Tag facet on Search and the Top tags chip strip on the Catalog Overview.

• Data Entity Groups & Domains — logical containers for related entities, plus the Domain framing that surfaces flagged DEGs on the Catalog Overview's Domains section. Includes the relationship to ML Experiments.

• Business names — alternative human-readable labels for data entities and dataset fields, surfaced alongside the technical name everywhere the entity is rendered.

• Data Entity Statuses — UNASSIGNED / DRAFT / STABLE / DEPRECATED / DELETED lifecycle markers; surface as a Search facet, drive an Activity-feed event, and trigger a soft-delete TTL handled by the housekeeping job.

• Data Entity Attachments — files (PDFs, CSVs, images) and remote-URL links attached to data entities for additional context. Storage backend operator-configurable; LOCAL is ephemeral.

Specialty cataloguing

• Vector Store metadata — vector-typed datasets recognised as a first-class catalog primitive (dedicated Vector Store dataset type plus Vector column data type), surfaced today via the PostgreSQL pgvector adapter.

Change and freshness signals

• Dataset schema diff — visual side-by-side comparison of dataset schema revisions, with backwards-incompatible changes additionally raising an alert.

• Metadata stale — per-entity orange clock icon flagging entities not re-ingested for longer than odd.data-entity-stale-period (default 7 days). A discovery-time freshness prompt; not a runtime alert.

Why this is a separate pillar

For how Data Discovery relates to the other governance pillars (Data Modelling, Master Data Management, Data Lineage, Data Glossary, Data Quality), see Main Concepts → Data Governance map → Pillar differentiation — the canonical home for the six-pillar framing.

Where to next

• If you know what you're looking for and want to type a term → Search and Filtering.

• If you don't know the exact name and want to drill down through known structure → Directory.

• For the surface that every discovery lands on — Overview tab composition, class-driven panels, badges, sidebar truncation, permissions → Data entity detail page.

• If you want to label an entity for cross-cutting discovery → Manual Object Tagging.

• If you want to gather related entities into a logical group or surface a domain on the home page → Data Entity Groups & Domains.

• For the broader catalog vocabulary (Data Entity, Plugin, Push adapter, …) → Main Concepts.

• For the position of Data Discovery among the other governance pillars → Main Concepts → Data Governance map.