About the Catalog Page

Use the Catalog Tool to browse, search and discover data either in your Oracle Autonomous Database, or connected to it and get information about the entities in and available to your Oracle Autonomous Database. You can see the data in an entity, the sources of that data, the objects that are derived from the entity, and the impact on derived objects from changes in the sources.

The Catalog page lists and displays details about:

• Database objects such as tables, columns, views, cloud objects, analytic views, packages, procedures, shares, share recipients, catalogs, catalog storage links, live table feed, share providers.

• Other types of object connected to the database, such as Cloud Storage Links, Cloud Storage Buckets, Cloud Objects (files on connected Cloud Storage), Compartments, Data Catalog Links, Catalog Storage Links, Autonomous Database.

• Database data dictionary objects such as tables, columns, views, database links, analytic views, packages, and procedures that have been created by the database tools or a database application such as SQL Developer.

The Catalog tool now provides a unified search and discovery of the following data assets that are connected to the Autonomous Database:

• Data in connected databases – for example, other Autonomous Databases in the same tenancy.

• Data in connected cloud storage systems – for example, in OCI, AWS S3, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.

• Data in registered data catalogs – for example, in OCI Data Catalog, or AWS Glue.

• Data in registered data shares – for example, shared from Data Bricks.

Catalog Tool Terminology

The following are some major terms related to the Catalog Tool:

• Catalog: A catalog consists of one or many schemas, each with one or many tables. A catalog simply represents the set of data in that database as it is organized into schemas and tables. The way you connect to the catalog determines the level of access to those schemas and tables. For other types of catalog, for example, catalogs that are mounted over external data catalogs or shares, the objects in the external system are still organized into schemas and tables but may not exist physically in such a form. For example, a catalog that is mounted over an AWS Glue data catalog may contain tables that actually exist as multiple files on AWS S3 cloud storage.

• Mounting a Catalog: This is the process of adding a new catalog connection to an external system so that the metadata in that system can be represented in the Autonomous Database catalog in a standard form.

A Local catalog is all the objects in or directly connected to your Autonomous Database as described in the above points. In addition to the local catalog, Catalog Explorer can add in additional catalogs so that you can discover data from other sources.

Additional catalogs can be mounted over:

• Mount Autonomous Database as Catalog: You can add a catalog to another autonomous database in your tenancy, which will allow you to search and discover all of the objects in that database based on the permissions for connection.

• Mount Database Link: The tool can mount an existing Database Link. Where a database link already exists, for example to an on-premises Oracle database, this can be mounted as a catalog. As with adding a catalog over an Autonomous Database, this option enables all the objects that are available to connection for search and discovery.

• Mount Data Share: The tool can mount registered live share or delta share as a catalog.

• Mount Amazon Glue: A catalog can be mounted over an AWS Glue Data Catalog database region.

• Mount OCI Data Catalog: The tool can mount data registered in OCI Data Catalog.

• Mount a Catalog over an Iceberg Data Catalog: The tool can add a catalog over an Iceberg Data Catalog.

Once a new catalog has been mounted, you can add the catalog in the Catalog tool, and search and discover data from that catalog, or across many catalogs.

When you first open the Browse catalog page, it contains the Search catalog field, the Show Catalog Settings button, Catalogs icon, a list of recently viewed objects, and several suggested searches. You can enter a search string, click on one of the recent objects to see its details, or click on Show search suggestions icon to view suggestions on the right side of the page.

As soon as you select Catalog menu from Data Studio menu bar, the page is displayed as below.

Description of the illustration catalog-fix.png

When you hover your mouse over a particular catalog entity, it will show a floating toolbar of common actions. The list is context-sensitive depending on the capabilities available for the particular entity. For example, tables in the current database offer more possibilities than tables in remote catalogs.

The Catalog page contains:

1. Search field

   You can search for the entities in the search field. For more details see Browse and Search Catalogs.

2. Catalogs field

   Clicking this icon opens the Catalogs dialog box.

   You can view a list of all mounted catalogs and schemas in this dialog box. You can also add catalogs from the Manage tab from the Catalogs dialog box.

   Select specific schemas from a database of your choice to refine your search.

   • To show tables of only the ADMIN schema from the default local schema:

     • On the Catalogs dialog box, click the Select tab, and type ADMIN from the Select Schemas search field.

       Note: The default LOCAL catalog is already selected.

       

       Description of the illustration catalogs-schemas.png

     • Select the Manage tabs to Manage Catalogs.

3. Default Database name and Schema name

   This field displays the default database name along with the schema name.

4. Catalog Settings

   Refer to Catalog Settings for detailed information.

5. Saved Search Suggestions

   Click to open or close the Saved Search Suggestions panel.

6. Filters option

   Click any of the filters icon to filter and refine the search results.

   Refer to Browse and Search Catalogs for detailed information.

   You can also Query Scopes to filter options to search for catalogs and save the search.

   Refer to Query Scopes in Catalog Settings for more information.

7. Faceted Filters panel

   Select one or more filter values to limit the entities shown on the page. Only those entities that match the filter values are shown. That is, the items returned by a search are filtered by these filter settings. The filters also change depending on the quick filters you select. See Filter Entities.

8. Display area

   The area beneath the Search catalog field displays the entities returned by a search and that match the filter criteria set in the Filters panel. You can sort the entities by clicking the Sort By button and then setting sort values.

   Hover besides the name of the entity to view details about the entity.

9. Toolbar

   The toolbar appears after you run an initial search. It contains these buttons:

   • Sort By

     To select sorting values, click the Sort By button to open the list of options. Then click the Ascending or Descending icon next to Name or Updated. For example, if you select the Ascending icon next to Name the entities will be sorted in alphabetical order by entity name. If you select Descending icon next to Updated, the entities will be sorted in reverse of the latest updated entity..

   • Click Reload to refresh the choices in the list.

     See Sorting and Filtering Entities for more information.