Introduction
Accurate asset documentation is essential but not easy to achieve because, in practice, documentation is scattered across different systems—in source code comments, warehouse system catalogs, and BI tool metadata.
Foundational brings this documentation together in one place and displays up-to-date documentation from across your connected systems. Foundational AI automatically identifies documentation gaps and automatically creates asset documentation using Foundational’s AI.
How it works
If you've added documentation: Foundational displays your content. This takes precedence over documentation generated by Foundational’s AI.
If no documentation exists: Foundational’s AI scans the asset’s lineage, usage information, source code, and documentation of upstream and downstream assets and populates the missing entries. Whenever there are material changes to the data stack, Foundational automatically updates the documentation automatically.
You can also assign owners to assets, assign asset tags, and set a certification status, e.g., change an asset status to certified or deprecated.
Documentation use cases
Use the Data Catalog Documentation panel to perform these actions. To see the steps, go to Actions.
Data documentation UI
When you select an asset, the Data Catalog displays documentation about that asset in the Content panel. (center).
① Selected data asset
② Documentation panel open for the selected asset
③ Asset certification
④ Asset owner
⑤ Documentation information
⑥ Inspector panel for the selected data asset
⑦ Search for a different data asset
Actions
Understand data context
Review and verify asset documentation
Review and verify asset documentation
Select an asset.
Click Documentation:
In Data Catalog: Documentation appears in the left sidebar
From other pages: Click the Info icon on the asset, then click Documentation in the Inspector panel
Review the documentation sections. Automatic documentation generated by Foundational’s AI displays the label "Generated by Foundational AI."
To edit any section, click the Edit icon.
Changes are saved automatically and preserved even when other metadata updates.
Identify asset owners
Identify asset owners
Select an asset.
Click Documentation:
In Data Catalog: Documentation appears in the left sidebar
From other pages: Click the Info icon on the asset, then click Documentation in the Inspector panel
Locate the Owners section.
To add an owner, click the + icon.
In the search field, type the person's name to find them.
To remove an owner, click the Bin icon next to their name.
Identify trusted data assets
Identify trusted data assets
Select an asset to view.
In the left sidebar, click Documentation.
Click the Certification dropdown to view the current status or add a certification.
You can also use filter assets by their certification status in the Data Catalog filter.
