Before a chess match begins, there is order; the board is symmetrical, with all the pieces lined up in their rightful spots. The queen and king stand proudly in the center of the board, guarded on either side by the knights and bishops. The front line of pawns provide the initial shield to the queen and king. While this initial layout is orderly and methodical, as soon as the first player makes their move, chaos ensues. After the first move, there is no more order. Rather, after the first move, every other move has a direct impact on the outcome of the next move. In fact, after both players take their first move, 400 games exist. After the players make their second move, 197,742 games exist. And after the players take their third move, 121 million games exist. This pattern continues until the game is finished, with an estimated 10^120 possible games according to mathematician Claude Shannon. This impressive number of games is greater than the number of observable atoms in the universe and grains of sand on Earth!Â
Similar to chess where every move impacts the next, a small physical change to data storage or movement can impact the flow of data upstream and downstream. As a business user, it is important that you are aware of these changes since they could dramatically impact reports you use to make business decisions. It is also important for IT to perform impact analysis before they make any changes to guarantee the changes do not negatively affect business. With Collibra Lineage, you can do this automatically. Our automated data lineage capability enables the enterprise to conduct impact analysis at a granular level (columnar level or a table or business report). This automated process saves data engineers valuable time over manual analyses.Â
Without Collibra Lineage, organizations must spend countless hours manually conducting impact analyses. In fact, to createoneimpact analysis, data engineers must go through five key steps that take multiple hours, or even days, at a time:Â
These five steps all occur before data engineers can even begin analyzing the impact that a change to a data source or system can have. Not to mention, manually conducting impact analyses can negatively affect a business. If data stakeholders are unaware of changes to their data, they could use inaccurate reports to make important business decisions. Thus, it is crucial that the organization does impact analyses in a timely manner to avoid detrimental effects of critical business decisions being based on bad data.
