2.8 KiB
Estimated reading time: 9–11 minutes
Definition
A Business Glossary is a governed collection of business terms and their agreed definitions.
Its purpose is to make sure important words mean the same thing across the organization.
Simple Mental Model
A Business Glossary is the organization's dictionary.
Each important term can include a definition, owner, status, exclusions, and related metrics.
How It Works
Example:
Term: Unique Viewer
Definition: A distinct viewer identity with at least one valid content viewing event during the selected period.
Owner: Digital Product
Exclusions: Internal traffic, automated traffic, invalid playback events
The technical implementation may live in Semantic Layer, but the meaning is documented in the glossary.
Example
Without a glossary:
Marketing: Subscriber = email newsletter subscriber
Product: Subscriber = paid platform subscriber
Finance: Subscriber = billable customer
All can make sense in context. The problem is when a dashboard simply says "Subscribers."
How It Fits Into the Bigger Picture
[[Data Owner]]
↓
Approves business meaning
↓
[[Business Glossary]]
↓
Documents meaning
↓
[[Semantic Layer]]
↓
Implements governed metrics
My Company / Real-World Context
Useful governed terms could include:
- Session
- Viewer
- Unique Viewer
- Audience
- Video Start
- Completion Rate
- Watch Hour
- Active User
- Subscriber
- Registered User
- OTT
- Connected TV
CTO Perspective
Many reporting disagreements are vocabulary disagreements disguised as technical problems.
A CTO can often improve the discussion by asking:
Are we actually using the same definition?
Start with terms tied to executive decisions, KPIs, financial impact, or repeated disputes.
Questions to Ask
- Which terms repeatedly cause confusion?
- Does each critical term have an agreed definition?
- Who owns it?
- Is it connected to Semantic Layer?
- How are changes approved?
- Can employees easily discover the glossary?
Meeting Scenario
Situation: Two reports show 400,000 and 520,000 subscribers.
Possible response:
"Before comparing the numbers, let's confirm what each report means by Subscriber. If one includes free registered accounts and the other only paid accounts, both numbers may be correct but the labels are misleading."
Key Takeaways
- A Business Glossary is the organization's governed dictionary.
- It documents agreed business definitions and ownership.
- Semantic Layer implements definitions; the glossary documents meaning.
- Many data disagreements are actually definition disagreements.
Related Concepts
- Semantic Layer
- Data Governance
- Data Owner
- Data Steward
- Metadata
- Data Catalog
- KPI
- Metric