Overview of Data Governance with Google Cloud

Video Summary:

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to explain how data governance is managed on Google Cloud and outline the key functions of Dataplex, Google’s data governance solution.

Overview of Data Governance with Google Cloud

Google Cloud offers a suite of tools designed to support data governance, one of the key services being Dataplex. Dataplex is a data fabric that unifies distributed data across various Google Cloud projects and automates governance. It ensures data is organized, discoverable, and secure, while enabling centralized metadata management and policy enforcement across different data environments.

Functions of Dataplex

Dataplex provides a variety of capabilities to support data governance:

• Data Mesh Creation: Dataplex enables the creation of domain-specific data meshes across different Google Cloud projects. This allows organizations to manage and unify dispersed data.
• Unified Governance and Monitoring: It applies uniform governance by implementing a single permission set to monitor and control access to data across various sources like BigQuery and open-source tools such as Spark SQL and HiveQL.
• Metadata Security: Dataplex standardizes metadata security, ensuring sensitive information is protected with centralized policies across multiple repositories, whether it’s structured or unstructured data.
• Serverless Analytics: Organizations can analyze data using serverless environments that support easy access to notebooks and Spark SQL queries without the need for dedicated infrastructure.
• Data Discovery and Organization: Dataplex allows you to discover, organize, and unify data from multiple repositories like data lakes, data warehouses, and data marts—all without moving or replicating data.

Why Use Dataplex?

Modern organizations typically store their data across various repositories, such as data lakes for raw data, data warehouses for structured data, and data marts for subject-specific information. Dataplex unifies these repositories under a single governance structure, ensuring that all data is efficiently managed and discoverable.

Key Benefits of Dataplex:

• Data Discoverability: Easily discover and catalog data across distributed environments.
• Curation and Organization: Dataplex allows businesses to organize and curate data based on specific needs, ensuring that relevant data is available for analytics.
• Unified Data Management: Without moving or replicating data, Dataplex provides centralized governance, improving data quality, enforcing security policies, and maintaining metadata consistency.

Unified Data Management Across Repositories:

• Data Lakes: Ideal for storing raw, unstructured data.
• Data Warehouses: Focused on structured, organized data.
• Data Marts: Subject-specific subsets of data warehouses.

For instance, a retail company could use Dataplex to manage data across these repositories—ensuring that their structured sales data in a data warehouse and their raw customer interactions in a data lake are governed under a consistent set of security and compliance rules.

How Dataplex Works

Dataplex operates by extracting metadata from both structured and unstructured data without the need for replication or data movement. When a new data source is discovered, Dataplex automatically extracts metadata and applies data quality assessments to ensure that the data is trustworthy and secure. This functionality allows businesses to handle data in any format and use it for various purposes.

For example, if a financial services company discovers a new batch of structured transaction data and unstructured customer feedback, Dataplex would catalog and assess both types of data, enabling it to be used for regulatory reporting or customer service improvements without needing to physically move the data between systems.

Real-Life Application of Dataplex

A real-world example of data governance with Google Cloud Dataplex can be seen in how Spotify manages its vast amount of user data. Spotify stores data across data lakes and data warehouses in Google Cloud, ensuring metadata management and data discoverability across different teams. By employing Dataplex, Spotify ensures that data engineers, analysts, and business teams have access to the right data while maintaining strict governance and compliance measures, especially around user privacy.

Another example is Wayfair, an online retailer, which leverages Dataplex to unify data from multiple global sources, making it easier for them to monitor sales, optimize inventory, and manage customer data compliance across diverse regions. By using Dataplex, they streamline metadata management and maintain consistent data policies across distributed data environments.

Mnemonic Reviewer:

• D-M-G-M-S-A
  • D: Data Mesh (Create data meshes)
  • M: Metadata Security
  • G: Governance (Unified data governance)
  • M: Monitoring (Monitor data access and usage)
  • S: Serverless Analytics
  • A: Automation (Automated data discovery and quality assessments)

Google Cloud’s Dataplex is a comprehensive solution that allows businesses to govern, manage, and unify data across various environments, from raw data in lakes to structured data in warehouses, while maintaining centralized security and metadata control. By using Dataplex, organizations can leverage powerful cloud capabilities to ensure data integrity, discoverability, and compliance across their entire data ecosystem.