Databases are the most important part of any organization. No matter how small or how big, they are required for storing and accessing data which should be accessible in the real time for reporting and analysis. Organizations today have many databases and managing them becomes a cumbersome and time consuming task. Hence, most of them hire professional companies for maintaining their databases which can increase the business cycle. Some of the main databases used by organizations are:

A data catalog is a metadata management tool specifically designed to assist organizations discover and manage large quantities of data including multiple tables, documents and databases stored in their on-site ERP, human resource, finance and e-commerce applications and other on-site sources such as social networking feeds. A data catalog provides an organized way to access data from varied sources and sort them to provide a common platform for all database users. The main advantages of using a catalog over file associations, is that with a catalog, users can make multiple user requests at the same time, thereby avoiding the allocation of duplicate entries to the source data. This also prevents users from mistakenly deriving information from sources where the data source does not belong. Catalogs also allow users to conveniently search for data assets which can save considerable time.

Data consumers are software applications that run on hosted software and web services. The data consumers operate as distributed systems, which can scale up as required. The data catalog provides a standard format to describe data assets and allows application developers to create, update and maintain them. The major advantages of using data catalogs are: data can be accessed rapidly, multiple versions of a document can be stored in the same database and there is no need to develop custom-made solutions for each application. Data catalogs can also be used as a mechanism for designing a robust system for managing the large volume of data produced by the organization.