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Head-to-head · updated 13 September 2026

DataShield vs Select Star: the catalog knows the column, but who let the agent read it?

Select Star calls itself a "Metadata Context Platform for Data & AI". The label fits. Point it at Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, dbt and your BI tools. It reads the query logs. Out comes column-level lineage, popularity stats, entity diagrams, AI-written docs. Often inside a day. Their MCP server has been live since July 2025. It gives Claude or Cursor seven read-only tools for catalog context. On 24 November 2025, Snowflake said it is buying them.

We are not a multi-warehouse lineage tool. We will not pretend to be. Ontology has a real catalog. But it scans live PostgreSQL today. Not your whole estate. What we add sits one layer down. We tokenize datasets at ingest. Agents query tokenized data over MCP. Turning a token back is a privileged step. We log it. We check each tool call against the agent's access first. Then we seal the decision into a hash chain. You can verify it yourself. Here is the honest split. Rows they win included.

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DataShield vs Select Star at a glanceEight questions data and risk teams ask us. Scored from each vendor's public material. DataShield vs Select Star at a glance Eight questions data and risk teams ask us. Scored from each vendor's public material. DataShield Select Star Tamper-evident audit chain you can verify Authority re-checked on every tool call Break-glass access for agents GDPR erasure that keeps the chain valid Runs inside your own perimeter Column-level lineage across warehouses and BI Days to first catalog value SOC 2 Type II attestation shipped partial / roadmap not offered Sources at the bottom of this page.

The short version

Pick DataShield when

  • An examiner will one day ask you to prove an agent's access log was not edited. Our chain answers with math. Not a policy PDF. Run the verifier.
  • You need to cut an agent's access mid-session. The very next tool call should fail. Not the next token refresh.
  • The data, the policy engine, the evidence. All of it stays inside your own perimeter, on keys you hold.
  • Your agents do more than read metadata. They query checked data. You need a record of who allowed it.

Pick Select Star when

  • You want column-level lineage across Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, dbt, Looker, Tableau and Power BI. That is their core job. They are quick at it.
  • Speed matters more than ceremony. Their pitch: metadata activation within 24 hours. G2 gave them a Fastest Implementation badge.
  • Your estate is Snowflake-centric. Post-buy, their lineage folds into Horizon Catalog. It feeds Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex Code.
  • You want semantic models built from the BI definitions you already have. In the Open Semantic Interchange shape.

Bottom line: most teams should run both. Select Star tells an agent what a column means. DataShield decides whether that agent may read the values. It keeps proof of the call, too. The one place we compete: the MCP seam. Theirs hands out context under a bearer key. Ours hands out checked data under a scope ceiling.

Feature by feature

Competitor cells describe what Select Star's site and docs say. As of the date above. Get something wrong? Email support@myorg.ai. We'll fix it, credited.

What mattersDataShieldSelect StarEdge
Catalog breadth and lineageWe register a live PostgreSQL source as a catalog provider. It gets scanned. We profile assets and columns in place. No rows leave the source. Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, S3 and Salesforce sit on the roadmap. No handler exists yet. Lineage is a typed edge graph. Access gating happens at every hop. It comes from the pipelines that own the data. Not from parsed query logs.The strong suit. Query-log parsing gives column-level lineage. Across the warehouse and BI layer. Plus dbt impact analysis and auto-drawn entity diagrams.◇
Field classification129 built-in field classes cover PII, PHI, financial data, and secrets. That includes all 18 HIPAA Safe Harbor identifiers. Regex does the work. So do checksum checks, column-name lists, and anti-pattern filters. No model, so results stay the same from a config file. The kernel went live this month. It's new. Not battle-worn.There is no classification engine. You tag a column as PII yourself. Select Star then scrubs matching values, out of stored query logs.◆
Audit evidenceSHA-256 hash chain. Ed25519-signed checkpoints. Those checkpoints chain too. A check returns clean, damage found, or tampered. It names the break. Try the verifier.SOC 2 controls mention audit logging. We found no tamper-evident log for agent access. No provable one, either.◆
Agent authorizationEach tool call passes a scope ceiling. Plus a consented-tool allowlist, and an access tier. Plus a fresh revocation check, before dispatch. It fails closed.The MCP server authenticates with a bearer API token. Their docs describe no per-agent scoping. What that token can see stays unclear.◆
MCP and agentsMore than 200 MCP tools, across Ontology, Auth, Corpus and Lighthouse. Agents read checked data, not just metadata. We meter each call. We tie it back to the agent.A real hosted MCP server since 17 July 2025. Seven read-only tools cover search, asset detail, lineage traversal, semantic models. Good context. It does not run the query.◆
Break-glassScoped, time-boxed emergency access for agents. It auto-revokes and cannot be quietly removed from the log.Not shown in their docs.◆
GDPR erasureCrypto-shred of per-subject key material plus ISO 27560 consent receipts. The audit chain still verifies afterwards.They delete buyer data on request. Or at termination, within up to 10 business days. That's a retention promise. Not a way to erase.◆
Tokenization and maskingDeterministic, join-preserving, vault-reversible tokens at ingest. Plus quasi-identifier generalization. Dates go to year, decade or age band. ZIPs go to 3 or 4 digits. Phones, SSNs, emails get partial masking. Each column gets a measured score. You switch these on. They aren't defaults. Turning a token back needs admin tier. Tenant-scoped, and logged.None. By design they hold metadata and query logs. They say they will never access your values. Not unless you explicitly authorize it.◆
Semantic models for AIWe materialize a business glossary from entity types. Golden records get exposed too, behind masked views. We do not generate BI semantic models.Semantic Model Generation turns Looker, Tableau, Power BI and dbt definitions into checked models. Founding member of Open Semantic Interchange, September 2025.◇
DeploymentSelf-hosted in your own cloud or data center. Or a dedicated server we operate for you. Docker images cover Auth, Ontology, Corpus and Lighthouse. Audit-signing keys stay on your instance. In a key folder you control. Key rotation fails closed on an unknown key. KMS or HSM custody is a built seam in Auth. Not a shipped integration. Tokenization keys sit in your environment today. Not in a KMS. We say so plainly.Multi-tenant SaaS on AWS. The docs show no self-hosted or on-premise option.◆
Maturity signalsLive in production, with Guardian and Lighthouse running since April 2026. SOC 2 not yet certified, and we say so.Founded 2020. About $20M raised. SOC 2 Type II every year since May 2021. Roughly 20 named logos. Now a Snowflake acquisition behind them.◇
PricingPublished model, scoped instant quote, no sales wall.Their pricing page shows no numbers. Capterra lists a $300 per month starting price. Marketplace listings put the basis at sources, users, and tables. Expect a repack into Snowflake consumption.◆

◆ DataShield leads◇ Select Star leads◈ comparable

Select Star claims come from selectstar.com. Also docs.selectstar.com. Also their own posts. Last checked 13 September 2026. We link them below. Not from memory.

Three things you get here that you won't get from a metadata catalog

Proof that survives an audit

A log that can be quietly edited proves nothing. Ours is a hash chain, with signed checkpoints. The verifier tells you what broke. Not just that something did. EU AI Act Article 12 reviewers care about that. So does HIPAA §164.312(b). Try it in your browser, no signup.

Authority that can change mid-flight

An analyst leaves on a Friday. Their agent is 20 minutes into a 40-minute job. With DataShield, we re-check the next tool call, against current access. It fails closed. A bearer API key sits in a config file. It does not know anyone resigned. How Auth does it.

A catalog an agent can act on safely

Ontology's catalog stores no column values by default. Storing a plain sample takes an explicit okay. It writes an audit row, too. Lineage checks run at both ends of every hop. An agent cannot walk the graph into data it may not see. See the catalog.

Where Select Star is genuinely stronger

Let us be blunt about the gap. Their connector list is long. Ours is one database. They parse warehouse query logs, to build column-level lineage. It spans Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, dbt and three BI tools. They do it fast. Activation within 24 hours, by their own claim. We are not going to catch that coverage this year. Or next. Their semantic-model work is credible too. They are a founding member of Open Semantic Interchange. That gives them a seat. They help decide that format. They have held SOC 2 Type II since May 2021, with no exceptions. We do not have SOC 2 at all yet. Their metadata-only posture is a real security win. A vendor that never reads your values cannot leak them.

Now the push-back. It's the same fact, read the other way. A tool that never touches values cannot find the SSN nobody tagged. It cannot mask it. It cannot tell you which agent read it. Their MCP server is a bearer token. Pointed at the whole catalog. The docs say nothing about scoping one agent away from another. They say nothing about a provable record. Not of what each agent pulled, either. Then there is the roadmap question. Snowflake announced the deal, on 24 November 2025. Lineage and discovery are heading into Horizon Catalog. The post promises to expand the context layer beyond Snowflake. It does not say what standalone pricing looks like next year. Run Databricks? That's a fair thing to ask them on the call.

Questions worth asking both of us

These are the questions we'd want answered, if we were buying. Ask them on each call. Ours included.

Can you cryptographically prove an audit log entry wasn't deleted?

DataShield: yes. Each record commits to the one before it. We sign and chain each checkpoint. A check tells deletion apart from truncation, and from tampering. Run it on a sample chain at /verify. Select Star: their security page lists audit logging among SOC 2 controls. We found no tamper-evidence check in their public docs. Ask them to show one.

What happens to a revoked agent mid-session?

DataShield re-checks access on each tool call. The pull lands on the next call. Select Star's MCP server uses a bearer API token. Their docs describe no session pull. Ask how long a rotated token keeps working. Ask who can rotate it, at 2am.

How does GDPR erasure interact with the audit trail?

DataShield crypto-shreds per-subject key material. It issues an ISO 27560 consent receipt too. Actor identities in the chain carry HMAC commitments. Not names. You can still check the proof, even once the subject is gone. Select Star deletes buyer data on request. Within up to 10 business days. That covers the account. Not a single data subject inside it. Ask for the method, not the timeline.

Is DataShield a data catalog? Do we drop Select Star?

We have a catalog, but no. Theirs covers your warehouse and BI stack. Ours covers a live PostgreSQL source today. Most buyers keep their lineage. They add our layer, for the datasets agents actually query. Someone claims one product does it all? Discovery, lineage, classification, tokenization. Agent authorization, evidence, every system you own. Ask for the demo. And a stopwatch.

Snowflake is buying them. Does that matter?

It depends where your data sits. All-in on Snowflake? Good news. Lineage folds into Horizon Catalog. It feeds Snowflake Intelligence. Run Databricks or BigQuery too? You now have a roadmap risk you did not have in 2024. We are independent and warehouse-agnostic. We run inside your perimeter. That's why several buyers call us. Fair warning: independence is a promise from a small vendor. Ask us about source escrow.

Does DataShield have SOC 2?

Not yet, and we will not imply otherwise. Select Star does, annually since May 2021. We offer a published threat model instead. A verifier anyone can run, too. Docker images you host yourself. Guardian and Lighthouse have been in production since April 2026. Design-partner terms include source escrow. Details on the security page.

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