# dealwithdata

> Governed data, written as governed data. Practitioner writing on data governance, metadata, lineage and data quality at personal, business and enterprise scale. Every item has a permanent id, a status (draft/reviewed/verified), authors, AI-assistance disclosure and cited sources.

Machine channels: https://dealwithdata.com/api/catalog.json (everything), https://dealwithdata.com/api/glossary.skos.jsonld (glossary as SKOS), https://dealwithdata.com/api/lineage.json, https://dealwithdata.com/api/events.jsonl (CloudEvents change log). An MCP server is described at https://dealwithdata.com/consume/.

## Concepts

- [Business term vs business element](https://dealwithdata.com/c/business-term-vs-business-element.md): A term is a word and its meaning. An element is governed data that carries that meaning in one context. Governance attaches to the element. [draft, dwd_2p63wxfx]
- [The metadata map: every piece, one example](https://dealwithdata.com/c/metadata-map.md): Catalog, glossary, dictionary, lineage, profiling, quality, contracts, semantic layer: what each one is, shown on a single loan-balance column. [draft, dwd_wg5zzqg2]

## Patterns

- [Serving metadata to people, systems and agents](https://dealwithdata.com/c/active-metadata-consumption.md): One canonical model, one governed write path, many read paths. How to turn catalog changes into subscribable domain events, and which channel serves which consumer. [draft, dwd_cb2bgvae]
- [Never recompute everything: incremental metadata feeds](https://dealwithdata.com/c/incremental-metadata-feeds.md): A feed that reprocesses millions of datasets every run stops scaling. Recompute only what changed, plus what changed rules touch, and reconcile on a schedule. [draft, dwd_q3gbjug4]

## Teardowns

- [Open Semantic Interchange (Apache Ossie): what it is, and what it isn't yet](https://dealwithdata.com/c/open-semantic-interchange.md): OSI is a portable format for semantic models: datasets, fields, joins, metrics and AI context. It is not a catalog, glossary, lineage or governance standard. Export to it; don't build your core on it yet. [draft, dwd_5hhpphgh]

## Glossary

- [Active metadata](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/active-metadata.md): Metadata that triggers action as it changes, through events, rules and agents, instead of waiting to be looked up. [draft, dwd_mgglmnwq]
- [Business element](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/business-element.md): A governed piece of business data that carries a term's meaning in a specific context, linked to physical columns. [draft, dwd_tthoszn7]
- [Business glossary](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/business-glossary.md): The organization's agreed vocabulary: business terms, their definitions, synonyms and relationships. [draft, dwd_xzf7arim]
- [Business metadata](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/business-metadata.md): What data means to the business: definitions, owners, rules, and how important it is. [draft, dwd_6azimhas]
- [Business term](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/business-term.md): A word or phrase the business uses, with one agreed definition. It describes meaning, not data. [draft, dwd_gdefyuzz]
- [Change data capture (CDC)](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/change-data-capture.md): Capturing inserts, updates and deletes from a database as a stream of change events, usually by reading its transaction log. [draft, dwd_xbqpgs7h]
- [Critical data element (CDE)](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/critical-data-element.md): A data element important enough to the business to require extra governance: an owner, quality rules, documented lineage and monitoring. [draft, dwd_zx3rfw43]
- [Data catalog](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/data-catalog.md): A searchable inventory of data assets across systems, pointing to their metadata, owners and lineage. [draft, dwd_lk4rq6xm]
- [Data contract](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/data-contract.md): An explicit, versioned agreement between a data producer and its consumers about schema, meaning, quality and freshness. [draft, dwd_qywin2zi]
- [Data dictionary](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/data-dictionary.md): A column-by-column reference for one system: each field's type, allowed values and local definition. [draft, dwd_6prph2yy]
- [Data lineage](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/data-lineage.md): The record of where data comes from, how it is transformed, and where it goes. [draft, dwd_2agj6wti]
- [Data profiling](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/data-profiling.md): Measuring what data actually looks like: counts, ranges, nulls, distinct values and patterns. [draft, dwd_2xjo4xi3]
- [Data quality](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/data-quality.md): Rules data must satisfy, and the measured results of checking it against them. [draft, dwd_gxekubnp]
- [Master data](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/master-data.md): The single trusted version of a core business entity such as a customer, product or account. [draft, dwd_qtwdi2p5]
- [Reference data](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/reference-data.md): Shared lists of allowed codes and values used across systems. [draft, dwd_p6v7pmhk]
- [Semantic layer](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/semantic-layer.md): A shared definition of business metrics and dimensions, so every tool and AI agent calculates them the same way. [draft, dwd_5k2ibrbv]
- [Technical metadata](https://dealwithdata.com/glossary/technical-metadata.md): Facts about how data is physically stored and moved: names, types, locations, schemas and jobs. [draft, dwd_gubdecks]