Concepts → Glossary Terms
Glossary terms in the Data Catalog enable organizations to define standardized business terminology that provides consistent meaning across data assets by connecting business terms with technical data assets. Glossary terms make data easier to discover, interpret, and trust across the organization. This enables data governance and compliance requirements.
Purpose
- Establish a shared business vocabulary across the data ecosystem
- Improve data discovery and understanding for both business and technical users
- Support data governance, compliance, and privacy initiatives
- Provide business context for technical data assets
- Promote consistent terminology across teams, dashboards, and reports
Glossary terms scope
Glossary terms are organized using Term Groups, which provide hierarchical organization for large business databases. They can include classification levels, which are privacy or sensitivity categories. Classification provides a consistent governance context across associated data assets. When applied, these classifications help support:
- Regulatory compliance requirements
- Data sensitivity labeling
- Governance policy enforcement
Starting 2026.3.0, Incorta provides an AI-assisted auto-classification capability that suggests classifications for unclassified glossary terms, enabling Data Governors to apply classifications more efficiently.
This feature must be enabled in the CMC to appear in the Data Catalog. Contact your Account Executive to configure and enable the auto-classification functionality.
User roles and permissions
Only users with the Data Governor role or SuperRole can:
- Configure and modify classification levels
- Apply classifications to Glossary Terms
- Manage governance-related glossary configurations
Restricting these capabilities ensures glossary governance remains controlled and consistent across the organization.
Glossary terms creation
Define the following to create a term:
- Term name
- Parent Term Group (optional)
- Classification level (if applicable)
- Associated data assets, such as specific data columns
For more information, refer to Manage Glossary Terms.
Starting 2026.3.0, the glossary terms naming flexibility improved by removing the global uniqueness constraint and enforcing uniqueness only per level, using case-insensitive validation.
Glossary terms filtering
Filtering enables faster discovery of relevant glossary terms and improves visibility into their governance and classification context across the Data Catalog. Use the following options to filter terms:
- Filter by term name
- Filter by classification level
Starting 2026.3.0, you can filter tables and views by assigned terms.