Lineage

Overview

Lineage in Prizm provides automated, end-to-end visibility into how data moves through your entire data ecosystem — from raw source tables through transformations and models to dashboards and reports. Every relationship is captured and made queryable, so you can trace where data comes from, understand what it feeds, and assess the blast radius of any change before making it.

Upstream analysis

Trace any asset or column back to its origin across multiple hops, source systems, and transformation layers.

Downstream impact

Map every consumer and dependent asset affected by a change to a dataset or column — before you make it.

Column-level lineage

See exactly which source column feeds which target column, including the transformation logic applied at each hop.

Features

Deep Lineage

Deep, native lineage integration for data sources, queries and pipelines.

Impact Analysis

Compute blast radius before making changes to any upstream asset.

Criticality Scoring

Understand which assets are most critical to downstream business processes.

Lineage View

The Lineage tab on any asset page renders a force-directed graph of all upstream and downstream relationships. The screenshot above shows SILVER_DIM_DATE — a dimension table in the PRIZM_RETAIL source — with its full dependency graph expanded to depth 4.

Canvas controls

Control	What it does
+ / −	Zoom in and out on the graph
Focus (crosshair)	Re-centre the graph on the currently selected asset
Rotate	Rotate the layout orientation
Lock	Pin the layout and prevent nodes from being repositioned
VIEW toggle	Switch between upstream view, downstream view, and end-to-end view
Expand / Collapse arrows	Expand all nodes or collapse to the focused asset
DEPTH selector	Control how many hops the graph renders — 1 to n levels deep. Default is 4.
ALL toggle	Show or hide all asset types in the graph
ATTR toggle	Show or hide attribute (column) level lineage edges
LINK toggle	Show or hide link-type relationships (e.g. dashboard → dataset)

Reading the graph

Each node in the graph represents an asset — a table, view, model, pipeline, or dashboard. Each edge (line between nodes) represents a lineage relationship between two assets.

Assets to the left of the focal asset are upstream — they feed data into it.
Assets to the right are downstream — they consume data from it.
The depth setting controls how many hops in each direction are rendered. At depth 4, Prizm traces up to 4 transformation steps away from the focal asset in both directions.
When the ATTR toggle is enabled, the graph expands to show individual column-level edges within each asset node, revealing exactly which column flows into which.

Lineage levels

Prizm captures lineage at two levels, each serving a different purpose.

Asset lineage

Asset lineage tracks relationships between tables, views, models, pipelines, files, dashboards, and reports. It answers: which assets depend on this asset, and which assets does this asset depend on? Asset lineage is extracted automatically during source onboarding and refreshed whenever schema changes are detected. It is always enabled and cannot be turned off — it is a core platform capability.

Relationship type	Description
`depends_on`	One asset requires another to function — e.g. a view that queries a table
`derived_from`	An asset was created based on another — e.g. a gold-layer table derived from a silver-layer model
`transforms`	Data is transformed when moving from source to destination — e.g. an ETL pipeline enriching a raw table
`copies`	Data is copied without transformation — e.g. a replication job moving data between regions
`aggregates`	The destination contains aggregated data from the source — e.g. a summary table rolling up daily totals

Column (attribute) lineage

Column lineage traces individual columns through transformation logic, capturing exactly how each source column maps to each target column and what transformation was applied. It answers: where does this specific value come from, and how was it calculated? Column lineage is extracted independently from asset lineage, executes after criticality processing, and completes before structural metrics run. It can be scoped by criticality level — by default all criticality levels are included.

raw.customers.email
      │
      │  LOWER(TRIM(email))
      ▼
stg.customers_cleaned.email_cleaned
      │
      │  direct mapping
      ▼
fct_customers.email_cleaned
      │
      │  direct mapping
      ▼
customer_360_dashboard.email

Onboarding execution order

When a new source is onboarded, Prizm runs lineage jobs in a strict sequence to ensure each stage has the data it needs:

Technical Catalog       ← discover assets, columns, and metadata
Table / View Lineage    ← extract asset-level relationships
Criticality             ← score each asset's importance and fan-out
Attribute Lineage       ← extract column-level relationships (filtered by criticality)
Structural Metrics      ← run profiling on columns
Remaining Platform Jobs ← observability, scoring, alerting

Attribute lineage must complete before structural metrics because profiling uses lineage to understand column relationships and compute criticality-aware quality scores. Skipping or delaying lineage delays the entire profiling pipeline.

Schema change and lineage refresh

When Prizm detects a schema change on an asset (column added, removed, renamed, or type changed), it automatically refreshes both table lineage and attribute lineage for the impacted assets only. A full source-wide lineage refresh is not required.

Schema-driven lineage refresh processes only the impacted assets. If a schema change affects a column that feeds many downstream assets, all downstream attribute lineage edges referencing that column are re-evaluated and updated. Downstream assets that had lineage through the changed column will show updated edge metadata on their next Lineage tab load.

Criticality and attribute lineage

Attribute lineage extraction can be scoped by criticality level to balance coverage against compute cost. By default, all criticality levels are enabled — Prizm extracts column-level lineage for every asset regardless of its criticality score. For large environments where attribute lineage is expensive to extract, you can limit extraction to higher criticality levels (Critical and High only) to focus coverage on the assets that matter most.

Setting	Behaviour
All levels (default)	Column lineage extracted for every asset
Critical + High	Column lineage extracted only for assets with Critical or High criticality scores
Critical only	Column lineage extracted only for business-critical assets

Table and view lineage is never affected by criticality settings. It always runs for all assets. Criticality filtering applies only to attribute (column) lineage extraction.

Integration with the rest of Prizm

Lineage is not a standalone feature — it enriches every other part of the platform:

Integration	How lineage contributes
Anomaly detection	When an alert fires on an asset, Prizm checks lineage to surface which downstream assets may also be affected and highlights them in amber on the lineage graph
Schema change monitoring	When a column is removed or renamed, lineage shows the exact downstream assets and columns that reference it — the blast radius panel on the schema diff view
Trust scoring	Criticality scores (used in trust scoring) are calculated from fan-out and downstream depth — both derived from the lineage graph
Data catalog	Lineage edges appear as related assets on every catalog page, and search results include lineage-connected assets
Quality recommendations	Prizm uses lineage to suggest where to add quality checks — high fan-out upstream assets with no monitoring are flagged as unprotected critical paths
Governance	Lineage provides the dependency map required for regulatory compliance — demonstrating data provenance, GDPR data flow documentation, and change impact assessment

Lineage Capabilities

Upstream & Downstream Tracking

Prizm automatically captures and visualizes the complete journey of data:

Upstream Analysis — Traces data back to its origins across multiple hops, identifying source systems, transformation logic, and intermediary datasets
Downstream Impact — Maps all consumers and dependent assets affected by changes to a specific dataset or column
End-to-End Visibility — Provides a unified view of data movement across diverse technologies, platforms, and organizational boundaries

Root Cause & Impact Analysis

Lineage serves as a powerful troubleshooting tool:

Issue Propagation — Traces how data quality problems cascade through pipelines and affect downstream consumers
Change Management — Evaluates potential impacts before implementing schema changes or pipeline modifications
Incident Response — Accelerates time-to-resolution by pinpointing failure points and affected systems during outages

Criticality & Dependency Calculation

Prizm’s lineage engine computes metrics that quantify data relationships:

Metric	Description
Criticality Score	Measures asset importance based on downstream usage, business impact, and consumer count
Dependency Depth	Calculates the number of transformation hops between source and target
Fan-Out Ratio	Identifies high-impact datasets with numerous dependent consumers
Usage Weighting	Applies weights based on consumption patterns (analytical vs. operational)

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Release Notes

API Reference

Overview

Upstream analysis

Downstream impact

Column-level lineage

Features

Deep Lineage

Impact Analysis

Criticality Scoring

Lineage View

Canvas controls

Reading the graph

Lineage levels

Asset lineage

Column (attribute) lineage

Onboarding execution order

Schema change and lineage refresh

Criticality and attribute lineage

Integration with the rest of Prizm

Lineage Capabilities

Upstream & Downstream Tracking

Root Cause & Impact Analysis

Criticality & Dependency Calculation

​Overview

Upstream analysis

Downstream impact

Column-level lineage

​Features

Deep Lineage

Impact Analysis

Criticality Scoring

​Lineage View

​Canvas controls

​Reading the graph

​Lineage levels

​Asset lineage

​Column (attribute) lineage

​Onboarding execution order

​Schema change and lineage refresh

​Criticality and attribute lineage

​Integration with the rest of Prizm

​Lineage Capabilities

​Upstream & Downstream Tracking

​Root Cause & Impact Analysis

​Criticality & Dependency Calculation

Overview

Features

Lineage View

Canvas controls

Reading the graph

Lineage levels

Asset lineage

Column (attribute) lineage

Onboarding execution order

Schema change and lineage refresh

Criticality and attribute lineage

Integration with the rest of Prizm

Lineage Capabilities

Upstream & Downstream Tracking

Root Cause & Impact Analysis

Criticality & Dependency Calculation