Business Glossary vs Data Catalog: Understanding the Differences for 2025

Updated February 19th, 2025
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Understanding the difference between a business glossary and a data catalog is crucial for effective data management.

A business glossary provides definitions of business terms, promoting clarity and consistency. Meanwhile, a data catalog serves as a comprehensive inventory of data assets, facilitating easier access and discovery.

Both tools are essential for enhancing data governance and supporting data literacy initiatives.

Business glossary vs. data catalog: First things first #

Think of it this way — for a business glossary and a data catalog to serve their core purpose, it’s best they co-exist. So if you are looking to choose between the data catalog and business glossary, we’d suggest you hold before you read through this, and understand how they both work in tandem to empower data users with finding, understanding, trusting, and using data.
See How Atlan Simplifies Data Cataloging – Start Product Tour

The main difference between a data catalog and a business glossary is that a business glossary helps you define a common language or way to talk about the data in your organization. A data catalog on the other hand helps you navigate through the entire data ecosystem in your organization.


Business glossary vs. data catalog: Comparison table #

Here’s a quick comparison table between the business glossary and data catalog to help you out.

Modern data catalogs come equipped with a business glossary as a component to ensure that once you find a data asset of interest, you can also gather enough business context around it.

In the next few sections, we go back to the fundamentals of a business glossary and a data catalog — and go through some use cases that’ll help us understand how they’re leveraged by data teams.

Table of Contents #

  1. Business glossary vs. data catalog: First things first
  2. Business glossary vs. data catalog: Comparison table
  3. What is a business glossary?
  4. What is a data catalog?
  5. How do data catalogs leverage the context in a business glossary?
  6. Think business glossary + data catalog instead of business glossary vs. data catalog.
  7.  How organizations making the most out of their data using Atlan
  8. Related comparisons
  9. FAQs about Business Glossary vs Data Catalog
  10. Data catalog vs. business glossary: Related reads

[Download ebook] → A Guide to Building a Business Case for a Data Catalog

What is a business glossary? #

A business glossary is a centralized repository of all key business terms used in the data-to-day operations of an organization. A business glossary standardizes an organization’s parlance so everyone speaks and understands the same common language.

A business glossary is especially handy in large companies with several lines of business, departments, and a wide variety of data. Each team could end up using different terms or interpreting the same terminologies differently.

Ways to organize information in a business glossary #

To get started you can organize your business glossary in three levels of hierarchy:

  • Term: A term is the fundamental unit of a business glossary. This can be a metric definition, a metric formula, or even a business taxonomy.
  • Category: Terms are grouped in categories mimicking business usage for better context and organization
  • Glossary: Categories are grouped into glossaries. You can think of a business glossary comprised of multiple glossaries belonging to separate teams, business domains, or data sources.

Example of a business glossary #

Here’s an example of how a business glossary gets rid of chaos around data definitions.

The U.S. Government has created a business glossary of typical health insurance terms. The glossary removes confusion between similar-sounding terms, such as Plan Year and Policy Year. While both terms refer to the period of benefits coverage, a Plan Year is for group insurance, whereas a Policy Year is for individuals.

Here are some other examples of public business glossaries so you get the hang of it:

To explore a business glossary in-depth, check out our comprehensive guide on business glossaries.

Business glossaries as we’ve understood by now come with a trove of context around certain terms that you may see as integral to understanding your data assets. But how do you really action this context while working with data? That’s where a data catalog comes into the picture.

What is a data catalog? #

A data catalog helps data professionals discover, understand, and consume data better.



Here’s how Gartner puts it:

A data catalog creates and maintains an inventory of data assets through the discovery, description and organization of distributed datasets. The data catalog provides context to enable data stewards, data/business analysts, data engineers, data scientists and other line of business (LOB) data consumers to find and understand relevant datasets for the purpose of extracting business value.

With a data catalog, you can organize, index, and regulate access to all data assets — with the context (metadata, classifications, and definitions) — for technical and business users alike.

How does a data catalog system look like: An example

How does a data catalog system look like: An example - Source: Atlan

How do data catalogs leverage the context in a business glossary? #

  • Easy access to context: The best data catalog tools surface business glossary context in every asset, every time you search
  • Searchable business terms: Modern data catalog tools also let you search data assets via terms of interest
  • Crowdsourcing context: Data catalogs also enable you to crowdsource context on data in a business glossary — in a way that fosters trust within your team
  • Getting rid of tribal knowledge: Anyone with access to data can add their own context to data in the business glossary via data catalogs. The best-of-breed tools allow easy governance of that — akin to making changes to shared documents on Google docs that need to be accepted by owners

There are many more ways in which a modern data catalog tool can activate business glossaries for a powerful experience of data discovery, understanding, and usage.

Data Catalog 3.0: The Modern Data Stack, Active Metadata and DataOps

Download free ebook

In the real world: Think business glossary + data catalog instead of business glossary vs. data catalog. #

So, a business glossary is part of a data catalog. Data catalogs help you find data assets, collaborate, and share data. With a glossary, they also help you understand key data management terms and stop asking questions like, “what does this data asset mean?” or “what does Y in this report stand for?”

So, how do you get started? Well, it’s simple. Deploy a data catalog tool for your team that’ll help you create and maintain a business glossary — context from which can be surfaced with your data assets when being searched for.

Looking for a list of tools to get started? Check out this list of enterprise data catalog tools listed in Forrester Wave™ Enterprise Data Catalogs For DataOps, Q2 2022 –> Download from here

How organizations making the most out of their data using Atlan #

The recently published Forrester Wave report compared all the major enterprise data catalogs and positioned Atlan as the market leader ahead of all others. The comparison was based on 24 different aspects of cataloging, broadly across the following three criteria:

  1. Automatic cataloging of the entire technology, data, and AI ecosystem
  2. Enabling the data ecosystem AI and automation first
  3. Prioritizing data democratization and self-service

These criteria made Atlan the ideal choice for a major audio content platform, where the data ecosystem was centered around Snowflake. The platform sought a “one-stop shop for governance and discovery,” and Atlan played a crucial role in ensuring their data was “understandable, reliable, high-quality, and discoverable.”

For another organization, Aliaxis, which also uses Snowflake as their core data platform, Atlan served as “a bridge” between various tools and technologies across the data ecosystem. With its organization-wide business glossary, Atlan became the go-to platform for finding, accessing, and using data. It also significantly reduced the time spent by data engineers and analysts on pipeline debugging and troubleshooting.

A key goal of Atlan is to help organizations maximize the use of their data for AI use cases. As generative AI capabilities have advanced in recent years, organizations can now do more with both structured and unstructured data—provided it is discoverable and trustworthy, or in other words, AI-ready.

Tide’s Story of GDPR Compliance: Embedding Privacy into Automated Processes #

  • Tide, a UK-based digital bank with nearly 500,000 small business customers, sought to improve their compliance with GDPR’s Right to Erasure, commonly known as the “Right to be forgotten”.
  • After adopting Atlan as their metadata platform, Tide’s data and legal teams collaborated to define personally identifiable information in order to propagate those definitions and tags across their data estate.
  • Tide used Atlan Playbooks (rule-based bulk automations) to automatically identify, tag, and secure personal data, turning a 50-day manual process into mere hours of work.

Book your personalized demo today to find out how Atlan can help your organization in establishing and scaling data governance programs.

Just in case you are evaluating a data catalog, business glossary, and metadata management for your team do take Atlan for a spin.

Atlan is a modern data catalog built on the premise of embedded collaboration that is key in today’s modern workplace, borrowing principles from GitHub, Figma, Slack, Notion, Superhuman, and other modern tools that are commonplace today.

FAQs about Business Glossary vs Data Catalog #

1. What is the difference between a business glossary and a data catalog? #

A business glossary defines key business terms and concepts, while a data catalog organizes and indexes data assets across an organization. The glossary enhances understanding, whereas the catalog improves data accessibility and discovery.

2. How can a business glossary improve data understanding within an organization? #

A business glossary clarifies terminology, ensuring that all stakeholders have a common understanding of key concepts. This consistency fosters better communication and collaboration, ultimately enhancing data literacy across the organization.

3. What are the key components of an effective data catalog? #

An effective data catalog includes metadata management, data lineage tracking, user-friendly search capabilities, and integration with data governance tools. These components facilitate data discovery, accessibility, and collaboration among data teams.

4. What role does a business glossary play in data governance? #

A business glossary supports data governance by providing clear definitions of terms and concepts. This clarity helps ensure that data is used consistently and accurately, which is essential for compliance and effective decision-making.

5. How can I create a business glossary that aligns with my organization’s needs? #

To create a business glossary, start by identifying key terms relevant to your organization. Involve stakeholders from various departments to ensure comprehensive coverage. Regularly review and update the glossary to keep it relevant and useful.

6. What are the benefits of using a data catalog for data management? #

A data catalog enhances data management by providing a centralized repository for data assets. It improves data discovery, facilitates collaboration among teams, and supports data governance initiatives, leading to better data quality and compliance.

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