Technical Lineage and Lineage Completeness

Technical lineage helps explain where data came from, how it moved and which processes or assets depend on it.

How lineage appears

Lineage behaviour is connector-specific. Purview can ingest supported lineage relationships from platforms and services when the required assets, permissions and source-side metadata are available.

Completeness matters

A lineage graph can be incomplete if only part of the data flow has been scanned or if an upstream or downstream system is outside the supported lineage scenario.

Operational and architecture responsibilities

• Understand the lineage capability of each connector.
• Ensure all relevant source assets are scanned.
• Maintain permissions required for lineage extraction.
• Investigate missing relationships before consumers rely on the lineage graph.
• Document known limitations where end-to-end lineage cannot be captured.

Lineage should be treated as evidence with known coverage, not simply assumed to be complete because a lineage tab exists.