Data Dictionary
User Guide — Understanding Your Data, Field by Field
| Last updated: September 2026
Contents
- Overview
- Key Concept: One Attribute, Three Views
- Finding Your Way Around
- Browsing and Searching Attributes
- The Logical Section
- The Physical Section
- The Data Quality Section
- Quick Reference
1. Overview
The Data Dictionary is your reference for the individual fields in your data. Each entry is a business attribute — a single piece of information, such as "Customer Name" or "Order Date" — and the dictionary shows what it means, how it's stored, and how healthy its data is.
Where the Business Glossary captures the business meaning of terms, the Data Dictionary goes a level deeper to the actual fields behind them: the columns, their data types, and their quality scores. It's the place to go when you need to understand exactly what a field is and whether you can trust it.
The Data Dictionary is a read-only view — it's for looking things up, not editing. You browse the list of attributes, search for the one you want, and read its details.
What you can do here
- Browse every business attribute in your environment.
- Search for an attribute by name.
- See its business meaning — name, description, and the term it relates to.
- See its technical details — column, data type, and whether it's a key or critical field.
- See its data quality — an overall score and the results of individual quality checks.
WHERE TO FIND IT — The Data Dictionary lives under Governance → Data Dictionary. It opens with the list of attributes on the left and the first attribute's details shown on the right.
2. Key Concept: One Attribute, Three Views
Every attribute in the dictionary is described from three angles, shown as three sections on screen. Together they give you the full picture of a single field.
| Section | Answers the question |
|---|---|
| Logical | "What does this field mean in business terms?" |
| Physical | "How is this field actually stored in the data?" |
| Data Quality | "How healthy and trustworthy is this field's data?" |
The rest of this guide walks through each section in turn.
A REFERENCE, NOT AN EDITOR — The Data Dictionary shows information that's set up and maintained elsewhere in OnCoor — for example, quality scores come from the data quality checks. Here you read that information; you don't change it.
3. Finding Your Way Around
Go to Governance → Data Dictionary. The screen has two parts:
- On the left — a search box at the top and, below it, the list of all business attributes by name.
- On the right — the detail view for the attribute currently selected in the list, split into the Logical, Physical, and Data Quality sections. When you open the page, the first attribute is selected automatically.
4. Browsing and Searching Attributes
The list on the left shows every attribute in the dictionary. Click any attribute to load its details on the right.
To search for an attribute
- Type part of the attribute's name in the search box at the top left.
- Press Enter or click the magnifier icon.
- The list narrows to just the attributes whose name contains what you typed.
To go back to the full list, click the X next to the search box — this clears the search and shows every attribute again.
SEARCH IS BY NAME — Like the glossary, this search matches on the attribute name. To search across attributes, terms, catalog tables, and transformations all at once, use the Data Asset search.
5. The Logical Section
The Logical section describes what the attribute means in business terms.
| Field | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Attribute Name | The business name of the field. |
| Description | A plain-language explanation of what the field is. |
| Associated Term | The Business Glossary term this attribute is linked to, connecting the field back to its agreed business meaning. |
6. The Physical Section
The Physical section describes how the attribute is actually stored in the data.
| Field | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Column | The name of the column that holds the field's data. |
| ID Column | Whether this column is an identifier (a key) for the record — Yes or No. |
| Data Type | The technical shape of the data — its type, its length, and whether it can be left empty (Nullable) or must always have a value (Not Nullable). |
| Is Critical Data Element | Whether this field is flagged as critical to the business — Yes or No. Critical fields are the ones that matter most to get right. |
| Custom Dimension | Whether this field is used as a custom dimension — Yes or No. |
WHAT "CRITICAL DATA ELEMENT" MEANS — Marking a field as a critical data element is how the business says "this one really matters." It helps everyone focus attention and quality effort on the fields that have the biggest impact.
7. The Data Quality Section
The Data Quality section shows how healthy the attribute's data is.
At the top, an overall scorecard percentage summarises the attribute's data quality — the higher the score, the healthier the data. A score of 100% means no quality problems were found.
Below that, each individual Quality Check is listed with:
- The dimension it measures — the aspect of quality it's checking (for example, completeness or validity).
- Its own scorecard percentage for that dimension.
Reading these together tells you not just whether a field has quality issues, but what kind — so you know where to look if a score is lower than you'd expect.
WHERE THE SCORES COME FROM — These scores are produced by OnCoor's data quality checks. If a score looks off, the data quality area is where the underlying rules and results are managed.
8. Quick Reference
A fast lookup for the most common actions.
| I want to… | Do this |
|---|---|
| Open the dictionary | Governance → Data Dictionary |
| See an attribute's details | Click the attribute in the list on the left |
| Find an attribute by name | Type in the search box → press Enter (or click the magnifier) |
| Show all attributes again | Click the X next to the search box |
| See what a field means | Read the Logical section |
| Find out how a field is stored | Read the Physical section (Column, Data Type) |
| Check if a field is a key | Look at ID Column in the Physical section |
| See which fields matter most | Look for Is Critical Data Element = Yes |
| Check a field's data quality | Read the Data Quality section — overall score and per-check scores |
| See which business term a field relates to | Look at Associated Term in the Logical section |
| Search across everything, not just names | Use the Data Asset search |
Source: OnCoor Governance product documentation, written for end users. For the latest screens and options, always refer to the in-app interface.