Hamilton College Data Cookbook

All Data Governance Resources

What is Hamilton Databank?

The Databank is a metadata repository that serves as the authoritative source for:

• Data fields
• Standard report and dashboard datasets
• Business glossary
• Report and ETL catalogs
• Data lineage

It ensures consistent definitions and promotes transparency, collaboration, and data literacy across departments.

Key Components of the Data Cookbook:

Definitions

Definitions are Hamilton Databank objects representing words or phrases that refer to an object, person, business concept, measurement, metric, etc., in use at your organization. Creating a definition captures an authoritative, shared meaning for a data concept so that everyone at Hamilton uses the same interpretation. Each definition is managed through a definition approval workflow and with impact analysis features.

Datasets

Datasets are data items that describe your reporting deliverables, such as reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, extracts, database views, or tables in our data warehouse. Datasets can also be items that are sent to external agencies or integrations between systems on campus.  Each dataset is managed through a specification approval workflow.

Quality Rules

Quality rules are guardrails and tests that verify data meets required standards for accuracy, completeness, and usability. For example: Ensuring email addresses contain the "@" symbol; numeric data contains only numbers and not letters or symbols.

Want to explore Hamilton Databank?

Members of the Hamilton community can request access after completing a short online Data Governance training. The training introduces key concepts like responsible data use, data stewardship, and protecting sensitive information across the College. Once completed, you’ll be given access to start discovering the data resources available to support your work in addition to learning more about the data in use at Hamilton.

For more information contact the data governance manager here.