Business Glossary

Introduction

In Blindata, the Business Glossary is the semantic foundation of your metadata model. It lets you define a shared business vocabulary—organized as namespaces, concepts, attributes, predicates, and relations—and connect that vocabulary to physical data in the Data Catalog .

You model in business language through the UI and Ontology Graph Editor . RDF and Turtle are not part of the day-to-day editor experience; they are available as an import/export interchange format when you need to share models with external semantic tools. See Ontology Modeling Guidelines for the full picture.

Depending on your organization’s maturity, you can grow into the glossary gradually:

  • Term catalog: Define core concepts (such as Customer, Product, Order) with descriptions and attributes (such as email, sku).
  • Taxonomy: Add inheritance hierarchies (for example, Customer and Employee under Person).
  • Full ontology: Model relations between concepts with predicates (for example, Customer → placesOrder → Order).
  • Knowledge graph: Link catalog assets to glossary elements so physical data inherits business meaning.

Terminology in Blindata

These docs use ontology for the glossary schema (concepts, attributes, relations, and predicates). The table below maps the main object types:

Term What it is
Namespace Domain container with a unique identifier (URI); scopes one ontology area
Concept Business entity or class (for example, Customer)
Attribute Literal property of a concept (for example, email)
Relation Link between two glossary objects (concept-to-concept or concept-to-attribute)
Predicate Reusable relation type (for example, hasName, isPartOf)
Ontology The structured schema within and across namespaces—the concepts, attributes, relations, and predicates that define your business vocabulary
Business Glossary The Blindata module where you define, govern, and link ontologies to the Data Catalog

When other guides mention glossary terms, they usually mean concepts, attributes, or other glossary objects—not a separate object type.

Guides in this section

Guide What you will learn
Namespaces, Concepts, Attributes and Predicates Platform building blocks, UI how-tos, CSV and Turtle import/export
Ontology Modeling Guidelines Design methodology: scoping, inheritance, anti-patterns, governance
Ontology Graph Editor Visual modeling: concepts, relations, inheritance, layouts
Track Business Glossary Maturity Semantic linking, metadata fill rate, and stewardship coverage at a glance
Your goal Start here Then
First-time setup Building blocks Graph Editor
Designing a domain model Modeling guidelines Building blocks (for UI steps)
Importing an existing ontology Turtle import/export Modeling guidelines → Integrating external ontologies
Connecting glossary to data Linking catalog assets (below) Data Classification for automation

How to define and manage the glossary

Choose the entry method that fits your workflow:

  1. UI and Graph Editor — Create and edit namespaces, concepts, attributes, and relations through list pages or the Ontology Graph Editor . No RDF skills required.

  2. CSV import and export — Export templates from list pages, edit offline, and import through the universal CSV import in Settings. See CSV Import and Export .

  3. API — Manage namespaces, concepts, attributes, relations, and predicates programmatically. Refer to the API documentation in your Blindata instance.

  4. Turtle import and export — Import or export an RDFS Turtle (.ttl) file from a namespace detail page. Import requires ADMIN on concepts; export is available to VIEWER. See import/export instructions .

Connect the glossary to physical data

Defining concepts alone does not change how data is stored. Value comes when catalog assets are linked to the glossary:

  • Manual linking — Associate physical entities and fields with concepts and attributes from the catalog UI. See Linking Catalog Assets To Business Glossary .
  • Semantic paths — On field links, define the chain of concepts and relations that leads to a target attribute. See Semantic paths .
  • Data Classification — Automate candidate links with rules and dictionaries. See Data Classification .
  • JDBC metadata import — Bulk-ingest semantic links during catalog crawl when mappings already exist upstream. See Import Metadata with SQL or JDBC .

From there, glossary concepts feed data products, quality rules, policies, and AI search across the platform.

Permissions

Glossary access is controlled by two layers: CONCEPTS privileges (tenant-wide) and, when enabled, Stewardship ACL (per resource, based on assigned responsibilities).

See the full Permissions List for all privilege definitions.

CONCEPTS privileges

Privilege Capabilities
VIEWER View concepts, attributes, namespaces, graph, relations, predicates; export Turtle/RDF from namespace detail
EDITOR Create and edit concepts, attributes, relations, and predicates (including via Graph Editor) within a namespace
ADMIN Create and delete namespaces; import Turtle/RDF ontologies; define custom properties on glossary objects

Stewardship ACL (responsibilities-based access)

When Stewardship ACL is enabled for the Business Glossary, CONCEPTS privileges alone are not enough to modify a resource—a user must also hold an assigned responsibility on that resource (through a stewardship role ).

Topic Behavior
Where to assign On a namespace or directly on a concept
Inheritance Responsibilities on a namespace are inherited by child objects—concepts, attributes, and predicates in that namespace
Without responsibility Users may still view glossary objects (if they have CONCEPTS VIEWER), but edit actions are blocked even when they hold CONCEPTS EDITOR
Configuration Users with STEWARDSHIP ADMIN enable or disable ACL per module from the roles page. See Manage Access Control Based on Stewardship Responsibilities

Example: A user has CONCEPTS EDITOR but no responsibility on the Sales namespace. With Business Glossary ACL enabled, they cannot edit concepts in Sales until a steward assigns them a role (for example, Ontology Steward) on that namespace or on a specific concept.

Assign responsibilities from object detail pages or through Stewardship & Responsibilities . Use dashboards to monitor coverage and gaps.

Glossary of key terms

Term Definition
Namespace Container that groups related concepts, attributes, and predicates under a unique identifier
Concept Business entity or idea (for example, Customer, Order)
Attribute Literal property describing a concept (for example, email, orderDate)
Relation Association between glossary objects (concept-to-concept or concept-to-attribute)
Predicate Reusable relation type applied across concepts (for example, hasName, isPartOf)

Updated on 25 May 2026