Understanding Data Lineage: From Source to Destination

I went to a restaurant yesterday, “Anthera.” After eating my fourth or fifth piece of pepper chicken, which, by the way, was delicious, I started to be amazed by our capability to digest and savor it. The way we use our mouth to taste, grind, mince, and swallow it, followed by our body transforming it, helping us in digesting the food, and filtering the wastes using the kidneys — it’s such a properly defined process, with each part having an important function. This makes me think that in the universe, everything is made by a design rather than a choice;

Just as our body has a well-defined process, a data project needs a clear flow — that’s where Data Lineage comes in. Design and architecture play a big role in data projects. Being worked on a live data streaming project, even a 30-second latency reduction can generate millions of profits for the firm. All this will be possible by having proper Data Lineage (DL) — by understanding and designing the flow from the start to the end, let’s get started, by knowing more about Data Lineage.

What is Data Lineage?

Data Lineage is the process of understanding, recording, and visualizing the data as it flows from start to end. From Originating Data Sources to Consumption, it aims to show the complete Data Flow. This includes all the transformations that data underwent along the way and how it is stored. Data Lineage Aids in maintaining data quality, reliability, and consistency.

• Data Quality: Data Lineage helps identify and rectify any inconsistencies, errors, or inaccuracies that may arise during the data flow, assuring the quality of data.
• Reliability: It minimizes the risks and disruptions from ongoing process changes and helps reduce ripple effects caused by the data transformations.
• Consistency: By knowing about the upstream and downstream movement of data from our tables, Data Lineage provides a clear map of how data moves through a system over time, enhancing consistency.

Further, it helps, in the optimization of the processes by identifying bottlenecks, redundancies, or inefficient paths. Together, Data Lineage helps in proper informed decision-making in the development stages.