Search for data assets

After data is scanned and ingested into the Microsoft Purview Data Map, data consumers need to easily find the data they need for their analytics or governance workloads. Data discovery can be time consuming because you might not know where to find the data that you want. Even after finding the data, you might have doubts about whether you can trust the data and take a dependency on it.

This article outlines how to search Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog to quickly find the data you're looking for.

Permissions to search the Unified Catalog

Searching Unified Catalog only returns relevant data assets that you have permissions to view.

You can find a data asset in Unified Catalog when:

• You have at least read permissions on an available Azure or Microsoft Fabric resource.
• You have at least data reader permissions on a ___domain or collection in the Microsoft Purview Data Map where the asset is stored.

Manage permissions to these assets at the resource level and at the Microsoft Purview Data Map level, respectively. For more information on providing this access, see the links above.

To search for curated, ready-to-use data assets, search for data products your organization has developed.

Searching the catalog

To search for data assets in Unified Catalog:

1. In the Microsoft Purview portal, open Unified Catalog.
2. Under Discovery, select Data assets.
3. In the search bar, enter keywords to narrow your search, such as name, data type, classifications, and glossary terms. Search suggestions appear as you enter keywords. Your search history is also presented so you can resume a previous data exploration.
4. To complete your search, select View search results or select Enter. For full search syntax information, see search query syntax.

The search results page shows a list of data assets and glossary terms that match the search terms. The keyword is highlighted in the return results, so you can see where the term was found in the asset. In the following example, the search term is "Sales."

The Microsoft Purview relevance engine sorts through all the matches and ranks them based on what it believes is useful to a user. For example, a data consumer is likely more interested in a table curated by a data steward that matches on multiple keywords than an unannotated folder. Many factors determine an asset’s relevance score. The Microsoft Purview search team constantly tunes the relevance engine to ensure the top search results have value to you.

Filter results

If the top results don’t include the assets you're looking for, you can filter your results by using the filter pane to the left of the search results.

On the search results page, select Filter to open and close the filter pane. With the filter pane open, select a filter category, then select the checkbox next to the values you want to filter on. For some filters, you can select the ellipsis to choose Or or And.

Available filters

You can add filters by selecting Add filter on the filter pane and selecting one of the following options:

• Activity: Refine your search to attributes created or updated within a certain timeframe.
• Asset type: Refine your search to specified asset types. For example: dashboards, files, glossary terms, or metamodel assets.
• Assigned term: Refine your search to assets with the selected terms applied.
• Classification: Refine your search to assets with certain classifications.
• Collection: Refine your search by assets in a specific collection.
• Contact: Refine your search to assets that have selected users listed as a contact.
• Data source type: Refine your search to assets from specified source types. For example: Azure Blob Storage or Power BI.
• Endorsement: Refine your search to assets with specified endorsements, like Certified or Promoted.
• Label: Refine your search to assets with specific security labels.
• Data asset attributes: Refine your search to assets with specified data asset attributes. Attributes are listed under their attribute group, and use operators to help search for specific values. For example: Equals or Doesn't equal.
• Rating: Refine your search to only data assets with a specified rating.
• Tags: Refine your search to assets with selected tags.

Bulk edit search results

If you want to make changes to multiple assets returned by search, you can modify glossary terms, classifications, and contacts in bulk. For more information, see How to bulk edit assets.

View assets

From the search results page, select an asset to view details, such as description, attributes, schema, lineage, and classifications.

Browse the Unified Catalog

Unified Catalog offers a browse experience that enables users to explore what data is available to them either by collection or by exploring the hierarchy of each data source in the catalog.

In Unified Catalog, go to Discovery > Data assets. Under Explore your data, select a card for how you want to explore your data: in Azure, in Microsoft Fabric, by source type, or by collection.

You can only see the data sources you have permission to view.

Searching Microsoft Purview in connected services

After you register your Microsoft Purview instance to an Azure Data Factory or an Azure Synapse Analytics workspace, you can search Unified Catalog directly from those services. For more information, see Discover data in ADF using Microsoft Purview and Discover data in Synapse using Microsoft Purview.

Search query syntax

All search queries consist of keywords and operators. A keyword is something that would be part of an asset's properties. Potential keywords can be a classification, glossary term, asset description, or an asset name. A keyword can be just a part of the property you're looking to match. Use keywords and the operators to ensure Microsoft Purview returns the assets you're looking for.

Certain characters, including spaces, dashes, and commas, act as delimiters. Searching a string like hive-database is the same as searching two keywords hive database.

The following table contains the operators that you can use to compose a search query. You can combine operators as many times as needed in a single query.

Known limitations

• Grouping isn't supported within a field search. Use operators to connect field searches. For example,name:(alice AND bob) is invalid search syntax, but name:alice AND name:bob is supported.

Next steps

• How to create and manage glossary terms.
• How to import and export glossary terms.
• How to manage term templates for business glossary.