Enterprise data catalogue as the cornerstone of data governance: a comparative study of open-source solutions

Aligning governance practices across data, metadata, and artificial intelligence (AI) is critical for ensuring trust, accountability, and data-driven decision-making. Metadata management and data catalogue are key components of successful data governance initiatives. This research proposes an evolutionary framework for the Enterprise Data Catalogue (EDC), tracing its development from metadata repository to enterprise data marketplace. We apply this framework to prominent open-source solutions to analyse their strengths, limitations, and strategic drivers. The analysis herein provides a guide for aligning an EDC solution with an organisation’s data strategy, and presents a research roadmap centred on AI integration, distributed data architectures, and standardisation.