[ATLAS-2607] Classification lifecycle through metadata properties and relationships

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Component/s: atlas-core
• Assignee: Madhan Neethiraj
• Reporter: Srikanth Venkat
• Created: 25/Apr/18 06:13
• Updated: 02/May/18 11:57

Description

Currently tags or classifications in Atlas are considered active once they are defined. For governance and stewardship purposes, it would be important to attach the notion of what state in its lifecycle a particular classification is. This would help with workflows to manage the lifecycle aspects and provide any filtering needed to take appropriate actions. For example only active classifications should be considered for classification based policy enforcement. Additionally lifecycle status would help with filtering and search as well as reporting and compliance/audit scenarios.

Implementation Proposal:

• All tags or classifications have a "Lifecycle Status" property
• They can go through the following list of states during their lifecycle: DRAFT > ACTIVE  > RETIRED
• Lifecycle Status can be set as an enum property that is mandatory or required for all classifications.
• All existing classifications already present in Atlas before this change will default to an ACTIVE status so that all pre-existing classifications will continue to work as before.
• All new classifications after this change will start out with DRAFT status and a steward or an admin with appropriate permissions can move them into an ACTIVE state (controlled via Metadata security policies)
• Policy enforcement for authorization on classifications can ignore any that are not in ACTIVE state. 
• Asset can only be attached to classifications with the status of ACTIVE
• For a classification in RETIRED state, we might have an optional relationship with another classification called "Replaced By" which is the new classification that the current one was remapped or replaced with. The inverse relationship could be labeled "Replaces" which is on the new classification and points to the removed classification that it replaces. 
• The state RETIRED implies this classification is no longer used and policy enforcement will ignore any classifications in such states. 
• Additionally UI can filter and show by default only classifications that are not RETIRED and a checkbox to "Show Retired"
• Deletion of classifications should work as it currently does with no behavioral changes.