Publishing virtual data to a catalog with Data Virtualization

You can publish your virtual data to catalogs in Watson™ Knowledge Catalog. An administrator can configure Data Virtualization to automatically publish all virtual objects that are created in the user interface to a configured primary catalog.

By publishing your virtual data to a catalog, you can:

  • Organize, label, classify, and search for the published data assets with global search.
  • Govern the virtual data asset and subject it to data protection rules by enabling policy enforcement in Data Virtualization.

Before you begin

An administrator can set the primary catalog to any governed catalog that they have administrator access to. A governed catalog is a catalog that is enabled with the Enforce data policies setting when the catalog is created. A governed catalog incorporates policies that enforce data protection rules, which control access to data or mask sensitive data. For more information, see Catalogs.

To enforce publishing to a governed catalog for virtual objects and views that are created by using the user interface, an Admin must follow these steps.
  1. Navigate to Service settings.
  2. On the Governance tab, enable the Enforce publishing to a governed catalog option.

    A list of governed catalogs that you have Admin access to is shown. You must select a governed catalog as your primary catalog. When you set a primary catalog, all virtualized objects are published to this catalog automatically. The Publish to catalog option is disabled when you review your cart and virtualize tables.

    A screenshot that shows the Service settings page and the Enforce publishing to a governed catalog.

    If you disable Enforce publishing to a governed catalog, all assets that are virtualized are not published to the primary catalog automatically. A user can publish their virtualized data to any catalog if the user has Admin or Editor role in the catalog.

About this task

The process of virtualizing and publishing data to the catalog involves several steps with different users and roles that are involved in each step.

Figure 1. Virtualize and publish data to the catalog
Process to virtualize and publish data.

If you have the Data Virtualization Admin or Engineer role, when you virtualize data by using the web client, your virtual data can be published to a governed catalog automatically if you select this option in your service settings. To publish virtual objects that you create by using SQL or the Data Virtualization REST API to the catalog, you can go to the Virtualized data page, select the virtual object that you'd like to publish, and then click Publish to catalog.

Data Virtualization Admins, Engineers, and Stewards can publish virtual data to the catalog manually.

Note: Publishing duplicate catalog assets for the same object might lead to inconsistent policy enforcement behavior when asset metadata is not consistent.

Procedure (publish virtual data to the catalog during virtualization)

To manually publish virtual data to the catalog during virtualization, follow these steps:

  1. On the service menu, click Virtualization > Virtualized data.
  2. Select the virtual objects that you want to publish and click Publish to catalog.
    A screenshot that shows the Publish to catalog option when you review your cart and virtualize a table.
  3. Continue with the virtualization process.

Procedure (publish virtual data to the catalog outside virtualization)

To manually publish virtual data to the catalog outside of virtualization, follow these steps:

  1. Alternately, to publish an object manually after it is created, click Publish to catalog from the overflow menu of a virtual object.
  2. To publish assets as duplicates, click Publish as duplicates if assets already exist in the catalog.
    Remember: Publishing duplicate catalog assets for the same object might lead to inconsistent policy enforcement behavior when asset metadata is not consistent.

Results

When published, virtual views have the type:view tag assigned to them in Watson Knowledge Catalog to distinguish them from the virtual tables.

What to do next

If you want catalog collaborators to use virtual objects that you publish to the catalog, you must grant these collaborators access to those virtual objects. For more information, see Managing access to virtual objects.

A screenshot that shows how to grant access to objects.
Restriction:

To avoid double masking when you use preview in Watson services, access control in Data Virtualization is not applied when you preview a data asset (table or view) that comes from Data Virtualization. This happens only when data masking or row-level filtering applies to the preview in Watson services. Access control does not apply in this circumstance.

The preview is subject to the data protection rules and catalog or project access control only.

Even though a user does not have access to query an object from Data Virtualization, they might be able to preview it in a catalog or project if they have access to that catalog or project the data asset.

Tech preview This is a technology preview and is not supported for use in production environments.