Unity Catalog tags for search, ABAC inheritance, and governed keys

The page explains applying tags to Unity Catalog securable objects. Tags are attributes with keys and optional values for organizing and categorizing objects and for simplifying search and discovery of tables and views. Supported targets listed include catalogs, schemas, tables, columns, volumes, views, functions, registered models and versions, external metadata objects, and several service types; dashboards, Genie Agents, apps, and notebooks are also mentioned. A warning states tag data is plain text and may be replicated globally, so personal or sensitive information must not appear in tag names, values, or descriptors.

When attribute-based access control policies are evaluated, tags at one level of the object model automatically apply to objects beneath—for example a catalog tag to its schemas and tables—but tags do not inherit to the column level, and that inheritance is only for ABAC evaluation, not general tag inheritance. Governed tags are described as account-level tags with enforced rules for consistency, including definition of allowed keys.

For teams building shared meaning, tags are lightweight classification metadata on the catalog graph. ABAC’s implicit inheritance makes higher-level labels effective policy attributes without re-tagging every child, while the plain-text caveat and governed-tag rules push consistency and safety. That is catalog-native governance vocabulary agents and humans can search and policies can read.