Overview

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

Enhanced Connector Enhanced connectors add extended capabilities and require a separate entitlement in addition to your Alation platform license.

The Azure Data Explorer enhanced connector is used to catalog Azure Data Explorer data sources in Alation.

The connector extracts Azure Data Explorer objects, such as:

• Cluster and database (cataloged as schemas)

• Tables

• Materialized views

• Functions

• Columns and column data types

After extraction, search and find Azure Data Explorer objects, curate the corresponding catalog pages, and understand data transformations using lineage diagrams.

The connector is distributed as a .zip package that you upload and install in the Alation application. Download the latest connector package from the Alation Customer Portal (Customer Portal > Connectors).

Team

Work with the following administrators to install and configure this connector:

• Azure Data Explorer administrator

  • Creates a service account for Alation.

  • Provides connection details, including the JDBC URI.

  • Provides authentication details and assists with authentication configuration.

• Alation Server Admin

  • Ensures that Alation Connector Manager is installed and running (or installs it).

  • Installs the connector.

  • Creates and configures the Azure Data Explorer data source in Alation.

  • Performs initial extraction and prepares the data source for Alation users.

Scope

The table below lists core features supported by the Azure Data Explorer Enhanced connector.

Feature	Scope	Availability
Authentication
Azure AD token authentication	Authentication using an Azure AD service account	Yes
Metadata extraction (MDE)
Default MDE	Extraction of metadata based on default queries built into the connector	Yes
Selective extraction	Ability to limit extraction using filters	Yes
Full extraction	Ability to run extraction across all accessible Azure Data Explorer databases	Yes
Extracted metadata objects
Cluster and database	List of clusters and databases	Yes
Table	List of tables	Yes
Materialized view	List of materialized views	Yes
Function	List of functions	Yes
Column	List of columns and their data types	Yes
Sampling and profiling
Table sampling	Retrieval of data samples from extracted tables	Yes
Column sampling	Retrieval of data samples from extracted columns	No
Custom query-based table sampling	Ability to use custom queries for sampling specific tables	Yes
Custom query-based column sampling	Ability to use custom queries for sampling specific columns	No
Deep column profiling	Value distribution statistics (profiling V2)	No
Dynamic profiling	Individual users connect with their own accounts to retrieve samples and profiles	Yes
Query log ingestion (QLI)
Table-based QLI	Ingestion of query history from a table or view	No
Custom query-based QLI	Ingestion of query history based on a custom query	No
JOIN and filter calculation	Calculation of JOIN and filter information based on ingested query history	No
Lineage
Table-level lineage	Auto-calculation of lineage based on MDE, and Compose queries	Yes
External table file lineage	Lineage for external tables	Yes
Column-level lineage	Calculation of lineage data at the column level (requires the Column-level Lineage Parser add-on)	Yes
Compose
Compose on customer-managed deployments	Customer-managed Compose on on-premise Alation instances	Yes
Compose on Alation Cloud Service	Compose on Alation Cloud Service instances (may require Alation Agent depending on network)	Yes
OAuth SSO in Compose	SSO via OAuth	No

Object mapping

Azure Data Explorer metadata extracted by the connector maps onto the Alation object model for RDBMS sources:

Data Source → Schema → Table → Column

Source object	Object in Alation
Cluster and database	Schema
Table	Table
Materialized view	Table
Function	Table
Column	Column