Feature launch: Data Catalog for collaborative event definitions

Data definitions should be a team sport. In the real world, though, hard-to-bridge divides exist between different business units. Development, data, and business teams have different incentives and operate independently.

This means data teams and developers rarely get complete requirements from business teams. A shared document may be floating somewhere in the ether, but it’s often an incomplete, out-of-date spreadsheet. This scenario results in messy event instrumentation that creates issues downstream. Issues that the data team has to fix.

If this sounds all too familiar, and you’re tired of cleaning up bad data after it lands in the warehouse, we get it. Today, we’re introducing our event Data Catalog, part of our Data Quality Toolkit, to help you guarantee quality data from the source so you can spend less time wrangling and more time helping your business drive revenue.

Data quality starts with alignment

As we covered in our piece on data quality best practices, alignment is the foundation for all of your data quality practices. Without explicit agreement on expectations and use cases up front, you’ll be in a perpetually reactive state, wasting time on brittle fixes. Breaking free from this reactive model requires intentional collaboration between dev, data, and business teams. But it doesn’t have to be high friction.

The chief barrier to data quality often stems from poor means, not a lack of motivation or cooperation. Part of the challenge comes from the need for a centralized place where technical and business teams can collaborate that also provides the tools data teams need to integrate data quality into their current workflows. Existing solutions provide one or the other, but our data quality toolkit is the only solution that delivers this powerful combination.

Align everyone with shared definitions in a powerful catalog

Within RudderStack, you can now easily create shared definitions for all of your events and manage violations with a seamless workflow.

• Automated Data Catalog – Our event Data Catalog automatically adds your events and their schemas, so you’ll never face the cold start problem or have to spend weeks trying to agree on tracking plans. You can use it to create shared definitions and establish standards. Because it’s automated, you never have to update the catalog manually, and you can easily add events to your tracking plans when new data enters the system.
• Event Audit API – We build everything with the data practitioner in mind. RudderStack doesn’t confine your data catalog to a rigid UI. You can access the entire thing via our Event Audit API. Using the API, you can programmatically audit your catalog, streamline troubleshooting, and report on the catalog as a whole while maintaining an efficient workflow. The API gives you access to useful information such as lists of events from the catalog, individual event versions, schema detail, and property counts.

Interactive demo: Data Catalog

Check out the interactive demo below to see the Data Catalog in action.

Get started

Fixing bad data after it hits the warehouse costs precious time and introduces fragility into your data infrastructure. But when you guarantee quality data from the source, you can spend less time wrangling and more time helping your business drive revenue.

To learn more about how RudderStack can help you align every team around the same event definitions and integrate data quality into your existing workflow, check out the docs for our Event Catalog and Event Audit API.

To see these features along with the rest of our Data Quality toolkit, request a demo with our team or sign up for our webinar featuring data quality expert Chad Sanderson on guaranteeing quality customer data from the source.