Query Forms

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

Query forms make queries into a self-service activity for those who can’t write their own queries. With query forms, you can run a query many times using different filter options—without writing any code.

For example, you could have a query that gets data on a particular state for a given month. If you turn the query into a query form, users could enter the state and month into a form and click a button to run the query using the information they entered. They don’t have to edit the query.

Query forms are catalog pages where you can view a query, enter your filter options into a simple form, and run the query using the values you entered. The query form results are only visible to the user who ran the form. See Use Query Forms for details.

To create a query form, the query author adds parameters to the query using a special syntax. See Create a Query Form for a description of the parameter syntax.

All queries can be viewed as a query form page, even if the query author hasn’t added any parameters to it. The user won’t be able to enter any values, but they can still run the query.

Access and Permission for Query Forms

To see and use a query form page, you must have:

• Run access or higher to the query (see Share and Access Queries for more details on access levels and how to change them).

• Credentials for the data source the query will run against (see User Authentication For Data Sources for more help).

• The Explorer or Composer role in Alation, depending on your Alation version (see Roles Overview for more on roles). You will need:

  • The Explorer role in 2023.1 and later for Alation Cloud Service on our cloud-native architecture

  • The Composer role in all other versions

More Information

For help creating and using query forms, see the following topics:

• Use Query Forms

• Create a Query Form