How to use Search, Glossary and classification in Microsoft Purview?

In this post, we will discuss how to use Search, Glossary, and Classification in Microsoft Purview. These three capabilities are the heart of Microsoft Purview.

Search is used to help empower the data consumers to find the data assets that make sense to them.

A glossary is a list of business terms with their definitions. Purview provides inherent capabilities to create terms, import and export terms, and assign them to the assets.

Classification is something like tagging to mark and identify the specific types of data in Purview. This helps to better manage and prioritize the data for the purpose of data security and compliance.

Purview Search Capabilities

Once the data sources are registered and scanned in Purview, it will begin to populate the data assets that represent (e.g. a table in an Azure SQL Database, a Power BI report, etc.). Azure Purview’s search experience helps empower data consumers to find data assets that matter to them. In this video, I have shown the demo of :

  • Search Catalog
  • Update an Asset
  • Browser Assets
  • Bulk Edit

Microsoft Purview Glossary

A glossary is sometimes called Data Glossary or Business Glossary. It is a collection of business terms with their definitions. Without using a Glossary it will become difficult to maintain and organize information about the data. It is used for capturing information that is commonly used, communicated, and shared in organizations in a consistent way. While implementing a glossary it is important to structure the terms and their definitions and create relations (if any) between the terms so we can avoid creating duplicate terms. In the video we have demonstrated these concepts:

  • Create a Term (System Default Term Template)
  • Create a Term(Custom Term Template)
  • Bulk Import Terms
  • Bulk Export Terms
  • Assign a Term to an Asset
  • Update an Existing Term

Purview Classification features

Classifying the data assets is a very important concept because without it you can not mark and identify the specific type of data found in your data estate. For the purpose of data security and compliance, you need to tag the PII and confidential data and then only it can be protected based on compliance policies.

Classification also helps to improve productivity and decision-making because it makes it easy to find the data. In the video we have demonstrated these concepts pertaining to classification:

  • Create a Classification
  • Create a Classification Rule (Regular Expression)
  • Create a Scan Rule Set
  • Upload Data to an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Account
  • Scan an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Account Search by Classification

I hope this helps.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *