Data discovery and description service

A computer-implemented data description and data delivery method, comprising:

• receiving, at a server computer via a network, an annotation of a data source, wherein the annotation comprises an association of a first global term with data for the data source;
• storing information on a data store, the information including descriptions of the data source, definitions of the first global term, and the annotation;
• receiving a client query to be run against the data store, the client query requesting an identification of data sources to which a respective vocabulary has been applied;
• determining, by the server computer, based on information stored in the data store, and in response to the client query, whether the respective vocabulary has been applied to the data source to annotate the data source in accordance with a set of global terms of the respective vocabulary;
• and
• providing, by the server computer, a second global term used for data source annotation in response to a query from a client device for global terms related to the first global term.

A computer readable storage medium comprising computer executable instructions that, in response to execution, cause a computing system to perform operations, comprising:

• receiving annotations of data sources, wherein the annotations include associations of global terms with data for the data sources;
• storing information, the information including descriptions of the data sources, definitions of the global terms, and the annotations;
• receiving a client query, the client query requesting an identification of data sources to which a respective vocabulary has been applied;
• determining, based on the information, and in response to the client query, whether the respective vocabulary has been applied to a respective one of the data sources to annotate the respective data source in accordance with a set of global terms of the respective vocabulary;
• generating subsets of the information in response to requests based on the annotations;
• receiving selections of at least one of a data source, an annotation, or a global term included in the subsets;
• and
• tracking the selections.