dScribe alongside Microsoft Purview

Purview secures your data. dScribe makes it understood.

Microsoft Purview is a strong compliance and security layer for the Microsoft estate. dScribe is the self-driving data catalog for the business context on top of it: definitions, ownership, quality and lineage, delivered to the people and AI that need them.

Lets grab a coffee ☕

Two catalogues, two different jobs.

The question is rarely Purview or dScribe. It's knowing which job each one does.

 
Microsoft Purview
dScribe
Primary focus
Compliance and data security across the Microsoft estate: sensitivity labels, data loss prevention and a technical map of Azure and Microsoft 365 assets.
Business context: approved definitions, ownership, quality contracts and lineage that people and AI assistants can actually use, across your whole stack.
Who it serves day to day
Compliance officers and security teams working inside the Microsoft ecosystem.
Data teams, BI consumers and business users who need to find, understand and trust the numbers they already use.
Keeping the catalog current
Scans registered sources for technical metadata on a schedule. Business meaning is largely maintained by hand.
The self-driving catalog crawls metadata on a schedule and proposes suggestions, like new terms, missing owners and undocumented columns, so the catalog keeps itself fresh and people stay the decision-makers.
Where context shows up
Inside the Purview portal. Consumers typically leave their BI tool to look something up.
Where the numbers live: the definition appears inside Power BI, Tableau, SAP Analytics Cloud and other BI tools, plus search, APIs and MCP-connected AI assistants.
Stack coverage
Strongest inside Azure and Microsoft 365. Non-Microsoft sources are supported but the experience centres on the Microsoft estate.
Built to sit across a mixed stack: data warehouses, BI platforms, SAP landscapes and AI tooling, connected through open standards.
AI readiness
Provides the compliance guardrails AI initiatives need inside Microsoft environments.
Grounds AI assistants in governed business definitions through a knowledge graph, so answers come back in your business's terms, not plausible guesses.

Better together, not either/or.

Purview governs access. dScribe governs meaning.

Purview answers who may see what, and applies the compliance policies around it. dScribe answers what the data means, who owns it and whether you can trust it. Most organisations need both answers.

No rip-and-replace.

If Purview already scans your Azure sources, keep it. dScribe reads the same technical metadata and adds the business layer on top: definitions, owners, quality contracts and the review workflow that keeps them current.

Context where Purview stops.

Purview's portal is a destination. dScribe pushes the same governed context into the BI tool someone already has open, and into the AI assistant they're about to ask.

See the business layer on your own data.

Twenty minutes, your own stack, your own definitions, alongside Purview or without it.

Lets grab a coffee ☕

Questions that come up

Does dScribe replace Microsoft Purview?+

Not usually. Purview handles compliance, sensitivity labels and data security across the Microsoft estate. dScribe handles the business context layer: definitions, ownership, quality and lineage. Many organisations run them side by side.

We're all-in on Azure. Why add another catalog?+

Because the part that breaks in practice is rarely the scan. It's the business meaning on top of it. dScribe keeps definitions current with suggestions and review workflows, and delivers them inside your BI tools and AI assistants, not a separate portal.

Can dScribe use metadata Purview already collects?+

dScribe crawls metadata from your sources directly on a schedule. Where Purview is in place, the two catalogues complement each other: Purview for compliance posture, dScribe for governed business context.