Configure Metadata Extraction

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.

Metadata extraction (MDE) fetches the deployed SSIS packages and their internal components from your SSIS Catalog and turns them into catalog objects in Alation. You can run MDE on demand or schedule it for regular updates.

Test Access and Fetch Packages

This step verifies that the connector has the necessary permissions and retrieves a list of available SSIS packages.

  1. On the Settings page of your data source, go to the MDE Configuration tab.

  2. Under Step 1: Test access and fetch schemas, click Run.

If the test is successful, the connector populates the section below with the SSIS packages it found. In the context of this connector, SSIS packages are treated as schemas.

Select Packages for Extraction

Select which SSIS packages to extract either manually or by creating filter rules with advanced settings.

Select Packages Manually

This is the default method for selecting a few specific packages.

  1. Ensure the Enable advanced settings toggle is off.

  2. In the list of packages, select the checkbox next to each package you want to extract.

If you make no selection, all accessible packages are extracted by default.

Select Packages Using Filters (Advanced Settings)

Use this method when you need to manage a large number of packages or want to define dynamic rules for scheduled extractions.

  1. Turn on the Enable advanced settings toggle.

  2. From the Extract dropdown, select one of the following:

    • Only selected schemas: Extracts only the packages that match the filter rules you define.

    • All schemas except selected: Extracts all packages except those that match your filter rules.

  3. (Optional) Select the Keep the catalog synchronized… checkbox. Any packages removed from your filter selection are also soft-deleted from the Alation catalog on the next run.

  4. Define your filter rules in the Select schemas that section. For each rule:

    • Select Schema in the first dropdown (this corresponds to the SSIS package name).

    • Select a condition, such as Contains or Starts with.

    • Enter a Filter value to match against.

    • Click Add another filter to create additional rules.

  5. Click Apply filters. The package list updates to reflect your rules.

Run Extraction

On-Demand Extraction

Click Run extraction to run a single MDE job immediately.

Scheduled Extraction

  1. Toggle Enable extraction schedule (recommended) to the on position.

  2. Use the dropdown menus to specify the frequency, day, and time for the extraction to run automatically.

View MDE Job History

After you run an extraction, click Go to MDE Job History to check its status.

For steps to link this metadata to your SQL Server or Oracle catalog objects, see Configure Cross-Source Lineage.