Overview of APIs and Client Libraries

You can use one of several programmatic interfaces when interacting with Data Catalog. These are the available interfaces, in the order that we recommend using them:

Google Cloud Client Libraries: Data Catalog client libraries are available in multiple languages and are built on gRPC. These client libraries provide a layer of abstraction on top of gRPC and handle the details of operation polling, retries, and more (see Data Catalog client libraries for more information).

Note: Although the Cloud Client Libraries are the preferred library choice, Google API Client Libraries for Data Catalog are also available. These "legacy" libraries access REST but not gRPC APIs (see Google API Client Libraries for additional information).
gRPC: If a client library is not available for your programming language of choice, you can generate gRPC client libraries for Data Catalog in any gRPC-supported language. To do this, you'll need the protocol buffers service definition available from our repository on GitHub. You can then follow the instructions for your preferred language on grpc.io to generate and use your client.
REST API: If you're unable to use Data Catalog's client libraries or the gRPC API, use the REST API.

For more information, see the following: