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Semantics are the organizational layer that connects raw data assets to the business concepts they represent. Every major surface in Prizm — the asset catalog, quality score groupings, RBAC rules, and criticality scoring — uses semantic context to filter, group, and prioritize. Without semantics, assets are unnamed tables; with semantics, they have owners, business meaning, and a place in the organization.

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Where to find semantics

Select More in the top navigation, then Semantics. The submenu lists Application, Domain, Glossary, Product, and Tag. Terms are managed from the Glossary.
More menu showing Access, Action, Analytics, Audience, Exception, Semantics, Source and Steward, with the Semantics submenu listing Application, Domain, Glossary, Product and Tag

The More menu with the Semantics submenu open

Drag an item from the More menu onto the top navigation to pin it there. The navigation holds up to four pinned tabs.

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The five semantic types

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How they relate

Domains establish the top-level ownership boundary — they answer the question “which business area is accountable for this data?” Each Domain can have Sub-domains for finer-grained ownership (e.g., Finance → Accounts Receivable). Products live inside Domains. A Data Product groups the assets that deliver a specific business capability (e.g., a “Customer 360” product containing customer_dim, orders_fact, and churn_score). Every product has exactly one owning domain. Applications are independent of the domain hierarchy. An Application — such as SAP, Snowflake, or Tableau — can span multiple domains and link to multiple products. It represents the system layer: where data is created, where it is processed, and where it is consumed. Tags and Terms operate at the asset and attribute level. Tags are free-form and can stack — an asset can be PII, Certified, and Production simultaneously. Terms come from the Glossary and are assigned one per attribute — the single authoritative business definition for that column.

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Where semantics appear

Domain

Define business areas and sub-domains. Set accountability and group assets by ownership.

Product

Group assets into data products with health metrics, SLAs, and adoption tracking.

Application

Register source systems, processing platforms, and consumption tools.

Tag

Apply flexible labels to assets and attributes for filtering and policy targeting.

Glossary

Build a business vocabulary with Glossaries, Categories, and Terms linked to attributes.

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Versioning and approval

Versioning tracks drafts and verified versions for assets, metrics, and semantic entities. It is off by default. An administrator turns it on in Organization → Platform → Properties → Versioning. Existing history is retained if you turn it off later.
  • Draft: Accepted changes are tracked in the active draft. Open the Draft button on an asset or metric to see the Version history drawer with Versions, Draft, and History tabs, and discard the draft if needed.
  • Not versioned until verified: An entity shows “No verified version” until its first verification. The version number is assigned only when the entity is verified.
  • Major and minor versions: One Major change makes the complete version Major, otherwise it is Minor. The Versioning settings page lists the Major and Minor rules for asset metadata, asset schema, metrics, and semantic entities.
  • Statuses: Metrics move through Pending, Ready for Review, and Verified.
  • Change tracking: Changes made through connectors, such as Sigma, are recorded in version history.
Version history drawer for an asset showing no verified version, the current draft, and the next minor version

Version history drawer showing a draft and its tracked changes

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Propagation from parent to child

Governance properties assigned at a parent level are applied to the objects below it. An administrator configures propagation in Organization → Platform → Properties → Propagation.
  • User assignments: Steward, Business, and Technical owners.
  • Semantic context: Domain, Product, Application, and Tag.
  • Targets: Asset (across the complete asset hierarchy), Metric (from the linked asset), Alert (from the linked metric or asset), and Issue (from the related alert).
  • Local override permissions: Allow propagated values to be changed independently for each entity and property.
Audience is included in propagation. Removing an inherited value also removes it from the asset list, and audit log entries for these changes are stored and displayed as JSON.