Step 4 selects the catalog assets your data product is built from: the tables, views, and dashboards it delivers. It is the fourth of the wizard’s seven steps, building on the ownership you assigned in Step 3 — Ownership.
What you set here
This step is where you pick which catalog assets the product contains. You work from the Available Assets table, narrow it with the two filter rows above it or with the per-column filters in the table header, and can optionally pull in an upstream port.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Available Assets table | Lists the catalog assets you can add. Select the ones the product contains. |
| Technology filter | Narrows the list by technology, such as Snowflake, Power BI, BigQuery, or SQL Server. |
| Asset Type filter | Narrows the list by type, such as table, view, or dashboard. Pick a technology first: until you do, the asset types stay hidden. |
| Show selected only | Toggles the table down to just what you have selected, with a count and a Clear selection action, so you can review your picks. |
| Consume an upstream port | Optional. Pick an upstream product and port to select all of its assets at once. |
| CONTAINED IN column | Shows whether an asset already belongs to another data product; the chip links to it. Filter the column to find or hide those assets. |
| Column filters | Each of Name, Type, Technology, Space, Path and Status has a filter in the table header. Select the filter icon in the column heading, then type. Filters combine, so you can narrow by technology and path at once. |
| Column sorting | Select the sort arrow in a column heading to order the table by that column. Type, Technology and Status group rows by value rather than sorting the displayed labels alphabetically. |
| Hidden-selection message | Reports how many selected assets the current filters are hiding, and offers to clear the filters. |
Why it matters
The assets you pick are the product’s actual data. Selecting them defines the product’s membership: the set of assets it contains.
An asset that already belongs to another data product still appears in the list, and the CONTAINED IN column shows where it lives. You can select it, but you cannot expose it on one of your output ports: Step 5 — Ports leaves it out. To deliver that data, consume the upstream port instead, and the wizard turns it into an input port.
For the difference between a product and an asset, see What are data products. For how assets attach to output ports, see Ports.
Rules the wizard enforces
The wizard enforces these rules on the Data Assets step:
- Assets must already exist. You can only pick assets that are already in the catalog. Scan or add them in Dawiso before running the wizard.
- Assets from other products stay visible. An asset already contained in another data product is listed here, with the CONTAINED IN column naming the product that holds it. The restriction applies on Step 5 — Ports, where those assets cannot be attached to an output port. To deliver that data, use the Consume an upstream port shortcut instead.
- Selection means membership. Every asset you select becomes a member of the data product.
Recommendations
These make the selection faster now and the published product cleaner later:
- Select assets that belong together as one product.
- Use the Technology and Asset Type filters to find assets quickly in a large catalog.
- Narrow further with the column filters when the catalog is large: filtering Path by a schema or container name is usually the quickest way to reach one system’s assets.
- Use the Consume an upstream port shortcut when your product builds on another product’s output.
The right assets give the product real substance to deliver. Next, expose that data through output ports in Step 5 — Ports.