Capabilities Inventory and Attributes

Capabilities consume input data and produce output data — the Capability is the processing context that gives data types their business meaning and determines their flow through the enterprise. The Data and Information Inventory and Attributes governs the Data and Information Types of the enterprise, and is the published companion inventory to which the data-flow attributes of the Capabilities Inventory link.

The Key Input Data and Information and Key Output Data and Information attributes in this inventory carry Data and Information Type Semantic IDs from the Data and Information Inventory for precise cross-inventory linkage. The relationship is many-to-many: one Capability can consume and produce multiple data types, and one data type can flow through multiple Capabilities.

This relationship enables enterprise data lineage at the capability level: every data type can be traced to the Capabilities that produce it (authoritative sources) and the Capabilities that consume it (dependencies). This lineage is essential for impact analysis when data sources change and for data governance ownership attribution.