# Frequently asked questions

The questions teams ask first: does anything run on its own, does Datapace move data, who validates, does it replace a catalog, what about compliance.

## Working with Datapace

### Does anything run on its own?

No. Agents draft proposals on the confirmed graph and every proposal waits for a person. Approval is recorded with who gave it, and the outcome is recorded when the change lands. See [agents](/docs/concepts/agents).

### Does Datapace move the data?

Datapace builds the graph from metadata, workload signals, and sample structures, within the scope agreed with your team. In a migration it produces the validated mapping and the findings; the load itself runs in the tooling your team chooses. See [migration mapping](/docs/guides/migration-mapping).

### Who validates the proposals, and how long does it take?

Your experts, the people who know the data. A first pass is a few working sessions, ordered so each one covers what matters most: the entities most of the workload touches, the columns flagged as personal data, the relationships with the most joins behind them. See [documenting an estate](/docs/guides/documenting-an-estate).

### Which model do the agents use?

The one your team chooses. Datapace is the graph and the gate, never the model. See [your model, our context](/docs/concepts/agents#your-model-our-context).

## Positioning

### How is this different from a data catalog?

A catalog describes what is there, once, and drifts. Datapace infers the meaning, has your experts confirm it, keeps it current through the same approval routine, and puts the infrastructure facts on the same graph so that routine work surfaces with evidence and every action goes through policy and the ledger. Catalogs describe; Datapace governs. See [the graph](/docs/concepts/the-graph).

### Does it replace monitoring?

No. Monitoring watches the engine. Datapace reads the workload signals monitoring already exposes and puts them on the graph next to the meaning, which is what lets a slow query point at the entity it serves and a dead table point at the job that fed it. See [across engines](/docs/concepts/across-engines).

### Does it replace the pipeline tooling or the BI tool?

No. The confirmed graph is what those tools read: the definitions, the flags, the lineage. They keep doing the moving and the charting. See [governed context](/docs/concepts/governed-context).

## Governance

### Does Datapace make us compliant with Law 25 or the GDPR?

No tool does. What Datapace gives a team is the record such regimes ask for: which columns hold personal data, confirmed by a person; where those values flow; what touched them, when, on whose approval. The compliance judgement stays with your team. See [policy, approval, and audit](/docs/concepts/policy-approval-audit).

### Can a ledger entry be edited or removed?

The ledger is designed to be appended, not edited. A correction is a new entry that refers to the one it corrects.

### How does Datapace connect, where does it run, and what does it store?

These are decided with each partner, engagement by engagement, and documented as each surface ships. These docs describe what the mechanisms do, not a deployment. If you want to see what Datapace reads on your own databases, [book a call](/book-a-call).