Entity: Representation of real-world element within Atlas.
Atlas will capture aspects of the element that will be relevant from
metadata perspective.
Relationship: How entities are
related to each other. This relation enforces aspects like lifetime and
containment. Different types of relationships:
- Composition: If one is deleted, the other is deleted as well. E.g. Table and Columns. If table is deleted all the columns will be deleted too.
- Aggregation:
If one is deleted other can continue to exist. E.g. Database and Table.
If a table within a database is deleted, database will continue to
exist.
Relationships help sound modeling of data.
Classification:
This is broad categorization of entities. Entities that are related
from a business perspective in some way are classified with same
classification. E.g. Sensitive information will reside in several tables
in several database in a data warehouse. A classification like
'Sensitive' can be applied to those tables.
Hope this helps!
