Data Hub Explorer Now Available for Self-Service Exploration of Harmonized Data

Data Hub Explorer is a new application that allows users to explore the entity models and harmonized data being actively managed in MarkLogic Data Hub Service.

After data is harmonized in MarkLogic Data Hub Service, users want to see the results. It is important to validate the harmonized data, assess data quality issues, and, more generally, explore the harmonized data before building downstream APIs and tools. Data Hub Explorer provides a search-based experience to do all that.

Data Hub Explorer is a straightforward, intuitive part of any data integration process. And, there is no coding necessary—it is easily accessible to business analysts and other non-technical users.

As the demo above shows, this initial version of Data Hub Explorer enables users to view an entity model and its associated properties, with data and metadata pre-defined by a data architect. As data architects add more information to the model to capture rules and relationships between the data, or change index setting, Data Hub Explorer stays in sync. This promotes a virtuous cycle where the ongoing work to model and curate data is leveraged to improve the downstream data access experience. This again demonstrates the value of having a unified hub rather than separating the steps of the data integration lifecycle across separate, siloed tools.

We built Data Hub Explorer in order to open up the MarkLogic Data Hub Platform to non-developers who want to quickly visualize both the data and the underlying data model through the lens of the business in a self-service experience.

Providing a self-service experience solves a top problem for end users. In one survey of 268 data management professionals, nearly half (45%) cited “limitations on data discovery and exploration” as a key concern with their current tools and approach (Source: TDWI Pulse Report, 2018, Reducing Inefficiency and Increasing the Value of Analytics and Business Intelligence).

Self-service exploration eliminates the time and lost fidelity of translating between analysts and developers and puts data directly in the hands of experts. This reduces costs and translation errors and empowers users. Of course, technical MarkLogic users can still query the data with existing tools and custom applications. But, Data Hub Explorer provides a simple self-service, out-of-the-box experience that we expect will address a significant percentage of “search and discovery” use cases.

This initial version is a big step towards our goal of simplifying complex data integration by creating a seamless experience for every user that flows through the process of integrating, curating, and accessing data. With subsequent releases, functionality will continue to expand and it will become more integrated into Data Hub Service, so stay tuned.

Getting started with Data Hub Explorer is easy. It is available today for users running MarkLogic Data Hub Service on Azure. And, it will be included by default in future product releases.

Key Resources

Documentation for Data Hub Explorer