Release Notes 2022.1 (General Availability)

RELEASE 2022.1.11

11.2.13.14725

  • Fixed an issue where Lexicon abbreviations confirmed by users disappeared from the Alation user interface after the Lexicon job was run.

  • Addressed an issue with high resource contention during the backup run. Previously, users observed slowness in Alation at specific hours of the day. Further investigation showed that the slowness coincided with the time of the dump_all_data stage of the Alation backup process and was due to resource contention on the host. This fix introduces an alation_conf parameter alation.backup_v2.num_of_thread that allows tuning the CPU usage down if needed.

RELEASE 2022.1.10

11.2.12.162488

  • Updated the transform job for the article data in Alation Analytics so that it updates the ts_updated field when a field that is not present in the public.article table is updated in Rosemeta. For example, the ts_updated field is now updated if a user favorites or un-favorites an article page, follows or unfollows an article, or edits the Description field so that the ts_updated in Alation Analytics and the corresponding value in Rosemeta will match. If you experienced this issue, contact Alation Support to reset the ETL checkpoint for article data on your Alation Analytics database.

  • Fixed an issue where the backup process changed the permissions of the some directories on the Alation server to world writable. Now, the permissions stay in the required format and the backup process does not affect them.

RELEASE 2022.1.9

11.2.11.162416

  • Fixed an issue where the data upload from a CSV file failed for Hive data sources. Now, data can be successfully uploaded into Hive data sources from the Alation catalog.

  • Previously, users reported issues with highlighting SQL errors in Compose queries containing comments. Incorrect rows were highlighted, making it difficult to find the error. Now, if a query body includes comments, the logic behind highlighting will correctly recognize them and highlight the row containing the error.

  • Fixed an issue in the user interface of the full-page Search where the More Types filter was not reset after users left the Search page and then clicked on the Search icon in the Search bar to go back to the Search page. Both All and More Types filters were highlighted. Now, only the All filter is highlighted.

RELEASE 2022.1.8

build 11.2.10.162352

  • Fixed an issue that prevents articles with duplicate titles to be created for a custom API.

  • Fixed an issue where the Alation Analytics database did not correctly reflect the changes to the picker and multi-select picker field options in Customize Catalog > Custom Fields that were associated with existing catalog objects. The issue was caused by the ts_updated field value in the internal server database not capturing the event of the change. Now, the ts_updated field correctly reflects the time of the change and the corresponding data is transferred to the Alation Analytics database during the ETL.

  • Fixed an issue causing the user profile page to load slowly when having many back references, resulting in a 502 error. The profile page now loads faster, even if there are many back references.

  • Fixed an issue causing a user without access to a private data source, set as watcher, even if the user no longer has access to the data source, to keep receiving notification emails for changes done at the object level. To fix this, we removed watchers in the potential list of recipients that do not have permissions to view the data source that is the subject of the notification.

  • Fixed a polling issue in Compose causing warning alerts in the Compose user interface during SQL execution, resulting from long polling when trying to fetch Hive logs. The fix handles the log resulting from the polling separately.

RELEASE 2022.1.7

build 11.2.9.162228

  • Addressed issues in Event Bus by removing the potentially vulnerable classes of Log4j from the corresponding Log4j.jar file included into the Alation application.

RELEASE 2022.1.6

build 11.2.8.162150

  • Fixed an issue where users with the non-admin roles of Steward and Composer were unable to authenticate against a Google BigQuery data source in Compose when the Viewer role enforcement was enabled. Now, Stewards and Composers can connect to Google BigQuery data sources in Compose using their database accounts.

  • Resolved an issue where scheduled queries failed because they were interrupted by the service outage caused by excessive memory consumption by the lineage adjustment process. Added a fix that allows disabling lineage invalidation sync from Compose for the DROP queries. This is controlled by the alation_conf parameter alation.lineage.sync_invalidation_from_compose (True by default).

  • Fixed an issue where after upgrading from a previous version, the Alation Analytics app icon disappeared from the Apps menu in the Alation user interface.

Alation Cloud

  • Fixed an issue where the Alation Analytics V2 data source did not get updated in EKS upon restoring. Now, the aav2_downstream_jobs updates the Alation Analytics V2 password, URI, and username correctly.

RELEASE 2022.1.5

build 11.2.7.162035

  • Fixed an issue where the left-side filters on the Search page were not populated when users selected specific object types in the Object Types filter (Articles, Data, BI, All Objects). The issue manifested itself if the Catalog instance had permissions on custom fields set up using people sets (for example, Stewards). After the fix, all filter facets on the Search results page load successfully.

  • OCF connector logs are now limited in size and automatically rotated.

  • Previously, we introduced log rotation for OCF connectors to prevent disk space issues. However, the change only applied to newly installed connectors and did not apply to existing connectors. Now, the existing OCF connectors will have their logs rotated too.

  • Fixed an issue with Compose parsing where records were passed as a set instead of a list. As a result, published queries were not displayed under the Queries tab on the Catalog pages of table objects, which was accompanied by the error ‘set’ object is not subscriptable in the celery-parsing_error.log file. This fix ensures the correct Compose query parsing.

  • Previously, users reported an issue with the built-in connector for SAP HANA data sources where in some cases it extracted columns as tables. To address this issue, we introduced an alation_conf parameter alation.feature_flags.enable_filtering_of_column_hierarchy_views_in_SAP_HANA. For filtering out the auto-generated column hierarchy views from the _SYS_BIC schema during MDE for SAP HANA, set this parameter to True.

  • For the Alation Analytics V2 ETL, increased the RabbitMQ timeout from 60 seconds to 3 hours so that the load from the stg to dim tables does not get disrupted. As part of this change, identity will be restarted for the total_replace tables so that not to exceed the int upper limit of 2 billion rows.

  • Previously, when metadata was uploaded in bulk using the public API, values only appeared in filters in Advanced Search after users accessed the page of the corresponding Catalog object. After this fix, the metadata uploaded in bulk will be successfully indexed and available in Search filters.

  • Added a new prompt as part of the Alation Analytics V2 Postgres upgrade from version 9.6 to 13, where an admin can provide a location where they want to store their SQL dump before proceeding with the upgrade.

  • Improved the performance of Articles when field-level permissions and multi-picker custom fields are in use in the article templates.

  • Improved the performance of the application start times. Previously, some customers reported a number of slow pages and poor user experience because of this slowness. As a result of this improvement, the homepage loading times should significantly decrease. We also optimized the amount of JSON encoding and serialization during the application start when Alation is loaded from a bookmark or after reloading a page. In some cases this should noticeably reduce page loading times. In addition, the page loading indicator is now displayed consistently and users can always see that their actions, such as clicking on links, have the appropriate effect.

  • In Alation Analytics V2, the ETL Manager is updated to generate the load ID sequence from the ETL checkpoint table instead of the Redis cache.

  • Fixed an issue where the server health check process sent multiple emails daily for jobs that were running on schedule and without issues. Now, alerts are only sent when the corresponding alert conditions are met.

  • Fixed an issue with email notifications for the data dictionary download: the download data dictionary email task failed for objects of large size with about 100k or more child objects. After the fix, this should no longer be the case.

Cloud

The Alation Analytics V2 database in EKS is externalized to AWS RDS. If RDS is enabled, the Postgres pod will not be deployed and all the database requests will be sent to the RDS host that is provisioned by the Unified Installer.

RELEASE 2022.1.4

build 11.2.6.161723

  • For Stewardship Workbench (bulk-actions on the Search page), added ability to bulk-add objects to and bulk-remove objects from policies (business policies).

  • For Stewardship Workbench, added success and failure messages to the actions of adding objects to and removing objects from policies and data policies. Users adding objects to or removing objects from a policy are now notified in the user interface if their action was successful.

  • Fixed an issue with Alation Analytics V2 where the user_type value was not fetched during ETL for users associated with both a built-in and a custom group. This issue was resolved by regrouping the timestamp filters of the extract query. Now, if a user belongs to a custom group, this information is extracted to the Alation Analytics V2 correctly. If a user does not belong to a custom group, the name of the built-in group will be extracted as the user_type value for this user.

    Important

    Action Required

    After the update, admins need to reset the ETL checkpoint for user data to reconcile the existing records. See Resetting ETL Checkpoint for User Data.

  • The following parameters were enabled on the internal Postgres database:

    • async_archiving

    • wal_compress

    • multi-threaded backup

    This change applies to the Backup V2 tool. It does not affect the steps of the backup process. Enabling these parameters should improve the backup performance and help avoid high I/O contention from the backup process.

  • Fixed an issue where the information about users and groups who were given access to data sources on the Access tab of the data source settings page was not extracted into the Alation Analytics database during the ETL. Added logic to update the ts_updated column for a data source when a user or group is added or removed from data source access settings.

  • Some workbooks were not extracted from the Tableau source due to a gateway error from the Tableau Rest API after making a certain number of calls. In order to resolve this, a delay is set when Alation receives this error from the Tableau Rest API before retrying.

  • Added ability to run multiple threads for Hive query log extraction, reducing the total QLI time for Hive data sources.

  • This patch release provides an updated version of the Upload Logical Metadata API. This modified API version allows updating multiple articles with the same key (article title) using the article_id parameter in the API payload. This API version is available on demand only.

Alation Cloud

Fixed an issue with the update process on the Alation Cloud to ensure that external Postgres, if configured, is not upgraded as part of the Alation update.

RELEASE 2022.1.2

build 11.2.4.161105

  • Improved the process of migrating lineage data from Lineage V2 to Lineage V3. This change fixes a data discrepancy issue where there were fewer links in the lineage database than in the Rosemeta database after the migration. This change also improves the performance of the lineage migration process and decreases the time required for the migration.

  • Upgraded the built-in driver for Databricks from 2.6.17 to 2.6.21. This addresses the Databricks driver security vulnerability described in January 24, 2022 - Log4j 2 Update and Databricks Connector Security Advisory.

Alation Cloud Service

  • Alation Analytics V2 database in EKS is externalized to AWS RDS. If RDS is enabled, the Postgres pod will not be deployed and all the database requests will be sent to the RDS host that is provisioned by the unified installer.

RELEASE 2022.1.1

build 11.2.3.159997

This patch is a security update for the built-in PostgreSQL driver vulnerability described in March 5, 2022 - JDBC Driver Security Advisory. In this patch, the built-in PostgreSQL driver was upgraded to a newer version where the vulnerability CVE-2022-21724 is not present. This upgrade addresses the PostgreSQL driver vulnerability for PostgreSQL, Greenplum, and Tableau sources in the Alation Catalog.

RELEASE 2022.1 - General Availability

build 11.2.2.159547

Data Governance App

Policy Groups

Policy Center users can now categorize policy objects by grouping them together into Policy Groups. Policy Groups can help organize data and business policies. One policy can be added to multiple Policy Groups. Policy Groups have a dedicated Catalog template and can be curated using custom fields associated with the template. They are discoverable using Alation Search and Search filters. The UI of the Policy Center page was enhanced to support Policy Groups: they appear in the Policy Groups table on the top of the page, while policy objects are listed in the All Policies table under the Policy Groups table.

Snowflake Tags Synchronization

Alation has added support for Snowflake tags, increasing the number of data governance activities that users can perform for the Snowflake sources in the Catalog. Server Admins can enable Snowflake tags synchronization in Admin Settings > Feature Configuration. During metadata extraction, Alation synchronizes Snowflake tags with the picker custom fields in Admin Settings > Customize Catalog > Custom Fields. Catalog Admins can associate tags with Snowflake data objects, such as Data Source, Schema, Table, and Column. Catalog Stewards can update tag values on the Snowflake objects. All users with access to Catalog pages of Snowflake objects can view the associated tag values.

Stewardship Workbench: Data Policy Bulk Actions

Stewards can now perform bulk curation of Snowflake table and column objects by adding or removing Snowflake data policies in bulk directly on the Search results page. These capabilities fall under Stewardship Workbench in the Governance App. Stewardship Workbench can be accessed from the Governance access page Apps > Govern by users with the Steward role or higher. The Perform Bulk Actions button is also available on the Search results page to users with appropriate roles. In this release, Alation adds the ability to bulk add or remove Data Masking and Row Access policies: Alation validates the selected objects for relevance and sends an API request to Snowflake to apply the changes. Specific types of policies will be applied to relevant objects only: Data Masking policies to column objects, and Row Access policies to table objects. The user will receive an email notification when policies are successfully applied.

Workflow Center Improvements

Ability to Use People Sets to Assign Reviewers

When assigning reviewers for a workflow, users are now able to select People Sets.

Ability to Include or Exclude Top Level RDBMS Objects from Workflows

When configuring a workflow, users can include or exclude the top level RDBMS object from the workflow using the Top level source included/excluded toggle on the workflow configuration page. For example, users can select a Schema as the Source Object, but exclude this schema object from the workflow, only enrolling the child Tables and Columns of this schema into the review process.

Curation Growth Report

The new Curation Growth report shows the curation trends for Catalog objects (articles, datasources, schemas, tables, columns) over the last year from the current date. The Curation Growth report is a tool for Catalog Admins and Stewards to further drive the Catalog adoption, curation effort, and governance activities.

Governance Dashboard Accessibility

The Governance Dashboard of the Governance App is now accessible to users with all roles.

Search and Discovery

Elasticsearch Upgrade

The Elasticsearch component has been upgraded to version 7.16, which removes Log4j 2 vulnerabilities discovered in December 2021.

Alation Full-Page Search Improvement

The Alation Full-Page Search interface now allows for selecting multiple object types from the Object Types Search filter.

Homepage Improvements

  • Catalog Admins can now configure the Alation Homepage. In Admin Settings, the Customize Homepage and Branding links are now located in the Catalog Admins section. Catalog Admins will see the Customize Catalog, Branding, and Alerts links when they click on the Settings icon on the top right.

  • Server and Catalog Admins can now customize the background image of the Homepage header. They can upload a custom image in Admin Settings > Catalog Admins > Customize Homepage > Homepage Search Banner.

  • Server and Catalog Admins now have the ability to add alerts to the Homepage. A message and style for an alert can be set up in Admin Settings > Catalog Admins > Alerts.

Back References for RDBMS to RDBMS Object Sets

Users can now add back references between Alation object types, leveraging the Object Set custom field. Back referencing is now supported for RDBMS objects. On Catalog pages of RDBMS objects, you can add references to other RDBMS objects as values of Object Set fields. In such a case, back references will be added under the Referenced By section on the page of the linked RDBMS object.

Public API Enhancements

Search API

Users can now browse the contents of Domains using the GET method of the Search API <your_Alation_URL}/openapi/search/>. The GET endpoint now supports the domain_ids parameter, providing the ability to list member objects of a specific Domain.

Domains API

  • The Domains API <your_Alation_URL}/openapi/domain/> now provides an endpoint to programmatically view which membership rules are applied to domains and subdomains: POST /domain/membership/.

  • Server and Catalog Admins can now delete Domain objects in bulk using the DELETE endpoint of the Domains API.

Data Source API

The PUT endpoint of the Data Source API <your_Alation_URL}/openapi/datasources/> now has a new parameter compose_default_uri that allows users to update the Compose Default Connection URI field for a data source. This does not impact the Service Account URI of the data source.

Compose

Select, Edit, and Delete Connections in Compose

Users can now select, edit, and delete data source connections and user credentials in Compose and the Catalog. This applies to:

  • Connection settings in Compose

  • Connection setting for running query forms

  • Connection settings for Excel Live Reports

Previously, users did not have the ability to modify or remove existing connection strings in Compose or the Catalog.

Connect Platform

Extracting Descriptions for Struct Data Type for Google BigQuery

MDE from the Google BigQuery data source was extended to extract descriptions of the struct data type. The extracted descriptions are not editable in the Catalog. They are displayed in the Source Comments field on the Catalog page of a struct column object.

Column-Level Lineage Parser Add-Ons

  • Query parser has been enhanced to automatically extract column-level lineage from common queries for Databricks and Azure Synapse (SQL Server) data sources. Column-level lineage parser add-ons for Databricks and SQL Server are available as beta versions.

  • Column-level lineage extraction from Google BigQuery and Amazon Redshift sources is now general availability. In the previous release, these add-ons were available as beta versions.

Manual Lineage Enhancements (Beta)

  • The lineage links can now be created, edited, and removed by all admin roles: Server Admin, Catalog Admin, and Source Admin. Previously, creation of manual lineage was only available to users with the Source Admin role.

  • Users with the Server and Source Admin roles can now create column-level lineage links. Previously, only table-level lineage could be created.

Ability to Turn Off Automatic Lineage for RDBMS Data Sources

Data Source Admins now have the ability to disable automatic lineage generation in the settings of RDBMS data sources. When disabled, lineage will not be created automatically during query log ingestion, metadata extraction, and from Compose queries. Lineage can be updated via API or manually. The Disable Automatic Lineage Generation setting is located on the data source settings page > General Settings tab > Lineage Creation section (bottom of the page).

Key Pair Authentication for Snowflake

Previously, when using key pair authentication for extraction from Snowflake, an admin had to specify sensitive authentication credentials in the JDBC connection URI. From this release, Key Pair Authentication is supported in a secure way where no credentials information is exposed in the Alation UI, URI, internal APIs, or logs.

OCF Connector for SAP BW and SAP BW/4HANA (Beta)

Users can now catalog their SAP BW sources in Alation and discover, search, and enrich SAP BW metadata for better analysis and governance:

  • BW Classic and BW on HANA support InfoObject, DSOs, InfoCubes, MultiProvider, and Query (MDE only)

  • BW/4HANA supports InfoObject, ADSOs, Composite Provider, and Query (MDE only)

Built-In Driver Upgrades

  • The built-in driver for DB2 was upgraded to version 11.5

  • The built-in driver for Presto has been updated to version 0.265.1

Enterprise Deployment

Viewer Role Enforced by Default

From 2022.1, the Viewer role enforcement is enabled by default. Previously, the default value of the feature flag alation.feature_flags.enable_permissions_middleware_feature was False, which meant that the Viewer role restrictions were not enforced and Composer, Steward, and Viewer roles had the same level of access. Now, with the default value of this parameter being True, new installations of Alation 2022.1 will feature a more restricted access for Viewers by default. This change also affects instances where the Viewer role was not enforced before updating to 2022.1: after the update, the access level of the Viewer role will change to the scope permitted for this role.

Manage Service Account Credentials in Azure Key Vault

Alation now provides a way to securely store the service account credentials in the Azure Key Vault at a customer’s organization instead of the Alation database. The Catalog will retrieve the account credentials from Azure Key Vault for MDE, QLI, Profiling, and Sampling. This guarantees greater security and allows IT admins to rotate the credentials based on their organization’s security policies.

Use MS Modern Email Authentication for Outgoing Email

Alation now supports authentication of the SMTP server used for outgoing email with Microsoft modern email authentication. Email server configuration options are available in Admin Settings > Server Admin > Email Server page.

Improvements

  • As part of the Log4j 2 vulnerability mitigation effort, the Hive Connector was patched to use a newer version of Log4j 2. This Log4j 2 version specifically addresses CVE-2021-44832.

  • To further enhance security of the Alation application, the OpenJDK version used in the Hive adapter has been updated to 8u312.

  • Query Forms in Compose now allow for multi-selection of filter values. The user experience with Query Forms in the Catalog and Compose has also been improved with better aligning the UI elements of the filter and enhancements to the handling of default values, cached variables, and quotation marks displayed in the fields.

  • Previously, the scope parameter in the OAuth token response was treated as a mandatory field by Alation; however, this parameter is not provided by some of the SSO applications, for example, Pingfederate, which caused an error during authentication. The scope parameter is now treated as optional by the authentication logic in Alation.

  • In order to configure the Deferred Query Execution, you can now use the alation_conf flags alation.connector.managed_execution.max_query_concurrency and alation.connector.managed_execution.max_export_concurrency. In the previous release, these parameters did not work. This is an alternative to setting the JVM flags directly using the parameter alation_conf connector.extra_flags. Changes to parameters alation.connector.managed_execution.max_query_concurrency and alation.connector.managed_execution.max_export_concurrency require the action alation_action deploy_conf_all and a restart of the Connector component.

  • It is now possible to use SSL connections from SSL-enabled databases when whitelisting IP addresses for the Alation Analytics V2 data source. Previously, non-SSL connections were added for whitelisted IPs even when SSL was enabled on the Postgres server.

  • The results of the scan_postgres action are now stored in the internal server database tables jobs_scanpostgresstatus and jobs_corruptedtables. The scan_postgres script will no longer fail after detecting the first corruption; instead, it will continue to verify the database until all tables are checked. It is also possible to add the scan_postgres alert to the list of health alerts for administrators: admins will get emails in case a Postgres scan finds a case of Postgres corruption.

  • Added the ability to configure the format for the Name ID property of SAML authentication requests. The Name ID format can be selected in Admin Settings > Authentication > SAML settings. Users can set Name ID to persistent or emailAddress.

  • The Archive processed QLI data now action in Admin Settings > Server Admins > Miscellaneous will archive the session data along with the events and mentions data.

Bug Fixes

Note

2022.1 GA includes all bug fixes listed for the 2022.1 LA version.

  • Fixed multiple minor CSS issues that were due to the CSS library upgrade in the LA version.

  • Fixed an issue where names of query authors were not displayed in the Table view on the search results page.

  • Fixed an issue where the Popular Articles report on the Alation Analytics Dashboard was not rendered correctly. After this fix, the report will display the top articles data, as expected.

  • Fixed a bug where since the update to 2021.4.x, users experienced issues with SSO connections from Compose to AWS sources and Azure Synapse (SQL DB). As a result, Data Source Admins had to reconfigure those SSO connections in Alation. SSO connections for AWS and Azure data sources will continue to work as expected after the update to 2022.1.

  • Fixed a bug where the object preview page of the selected table or column object did not load in the object preview section under the Lineage diagram, and the loading icon was displayed indefinitely. Now, the previews for the table or column objects selected on the diagram will be displayed as expected.

  • Fixed an issue where users were unable to set a Compose connection as an active connection until they reloaded the Compose page. Now, users can create a connection and select it as an active connection without the page reload.

  • Fixed an issue where users with the Composer role received the permission denied error when they attempted to perform a data upload. Now, users with the Composer or Steward roles can successfully upload data for a table.

  • Fixed an issue where users with the Composer or Steward roles could not manage the credentials of Compose connections. After this fix, all Compose users can manage their database credentials.

  • Fixed an issue where performing a bulk action after selecting all objects in the search results did not produce the expected outcome: actions were applied to a subset of the selected objects. Now, bulk actions apply to all selected objects.

  • Fixed a bug where the Submit for Review button was disabled when changes were proposed for the Title field. Now, users are able to successfully submit changes to object titles.

  • Fixed an issue where the Snowflake key pair authentication checkbox was displayed on the settings page of all data source types.

  • Fixed an issue where the restore process for a backup taken with the Backup V1 tool issued an error Failed to access directory “/data2/backup/pgbackup/backups/alation”: No such file or directory ERROR: Instance ‘alation’ does not exist in this backup catalog.

RELEASE 2022.1 - Limited Availability

build 11.2.0.158074

For feature list, see the list of features in the General Availability section.

Bug Fixes In the LA Version

  • Fixed an issue where export to CSV failed with a generic error Something went wrong while processing your CSV file for <table_name> for the Impact Analysis report with column-level lineage data. After this fix, exports to CSV should be successful.

  • Fixed an issue with Search results when only the name of a schema was displayed in the suggested results list instead of the full name of the type database.schema. Now, the full name is displayed for schemas.

  • Fixed a time zone issue in query forms for dates selected from the custom date picker widget. Previously, users reported that after selecting a date, the date which was one day earlier was populated in the Date filter. Now, the date that is selected will be displayed.

  • Fixed an issue where redundant error messages related to pg_last_xlog_receive_location were written to the Postgres log, creating logging noise and preventing an effective search for useful error messages. Added logic to clean up WAL logs regularly.

  • Fixed an issue where users were unable to reject a Lexicon expansion due to a specific network security setup. The issue was resolved by improving the handling of payloads within the DELETE request: the request information is now sent in the request URL parameter instead of the request body.

  • Fixed an issue where table aliases were represented as temporary tables on the Lineage diagram. Only real table objects are now plotted on the Lineage diagram.

  • Fixed an issue where extraction from Tableau failed due to a large log message size. To avoid the issue, the log message is currently truncated to the specific number of characters that is configurable. This is configurable using the parameter alation.job.maxMessageLen that defaults to 1000.

  • Previously, the SAML assertion encryption feature did not work with ADFS. Now the encrypted assertions from ADFS are correctly decrypted in Alation.

  • Fixed an issue where users querying the Alation Analytics V2 database for search queries retrieved empty results although search was in heavy use on the instance. The problem was caused by the column num_results of the table search_queries being populated incorrectly. Now, Alation Analytics queries about search will return results.

  • Fixed an issue where the values of rich text custom fields with an @-mention were not correctly stored in the Alation Analytics database. After the fix, the full value of such fields can be retrieved when querying Alation Analytics.

  • Previously, if Alation Analytics V2 had no data or had not been enabled on an instance, the Governance Dashboard displayed loading icons on all charts. Now, the dashboard will display empty charts with the No data message.

  • Fixed a bug where the assigned_to field in the public.conversations table of the Alation Analytics V2 database was not populated and stored the NULL value instead of the actual value. The issue was resolved by improving the JOIN logic for joining the required Rosemeta tables in order to populate the public.conversations table.

  • Previously, when the Users table was paginated and an admin attempted to approve a user by bypassing email confirmation or to change the role of a user that was located on pages after page 10, the page was refreshed displaying a list of different users. Now, actions on paginated User tables do not affect the list of users on the current page.

  • Fixed an issue where extraction from Tableau failed with the error out of memory DETAIL: Cannot enlarge string buffer. This was resolved by adding logic that handles extraction of a large volume of BI permission information.

  • Fixed an issue where Compose users could not connect to the Presto data source with an error Connector Error: value too long for type character varying(214). The bug was due to a length limitation on the field used to store the properties of db_username and db_password. This was resolved by changing the associated field type.

  • Fixed an issue where QLI from Hive failed attempting to extract query history outside of the configured date range. Now, QLI will only pull in query history that falls within the specified range.

  • Fixed an issue where republishing a query erased previous edits to the Description field of the query. Now, the Description field stays intact, as is expected.

Known Issues

Alation Analytics

The aamanager container may not start automatically after the update of Alation Analytics or after a system reboot. In this case, the admin performing the update needs to start it manually, on the Alation Analytics host, with the following command: sudo service aamanager start. To check the status of AA Manager: sudo service aamanager status.

Sources

  • Dynamic table sampling does not work for Hive data sources added on the default Hive framework.

  • When a user enters incorrect credentials for the Snowflake key pair authentication on the settings page > General Settings tab, the error message will prompt to check username and password. This wording is incorrect and users should check the key pair authentication credentials that they entered.

  • For the Snowflake data source, on the settings page > General Settings > Service Account, the Save button for key pair authentication configuration does not automatically trigger the connection test. To test the connection, users have to click the Test button as a separate action.

UI

  • You may encounter minor CSS issues in the LA version due to the most recent CSS library updates. On some pages and dialog windows, font styles may appear inconsistent, input fields may be misaligned, and the styles may look off. FIXED IN GA

Authentication

After the upgrade from 2021.4 to 2022.1 LA, Compose SSO for Azure Synapse with Azure AD may fail with the following error: Error: Redirect handler: The scope must include an “openid” value. FIXED IN GA

Compose

  • Users are unable to set a newly added connection and credentials as an active connection in Compose until after the Compose page is reloaded. FIXED IN GA

  • For SQL Server and Hive data sources, a new connection created in Compose may result in the error Error verifying credentials. Please check your username and password.

  • For users with the Composer role, the Upload Data action returns a Permission Denied (403) error. This action should be accessible to Composers. FIXED IN GA

  • New user credentials cannot be added to the Connect as (Select user) dropdown for Google BigQuery in the transient authentication mode. Instead, a black field is added to the list of users.

  • Query forms don’t prompt for credentials with Google BigQuery in the transient authentication mode.

  • Users with non-admin roles (Composer and Steward) are unable to add new user credentials in the connection dialog. FIXED IN GA

Workflows

  • The Submit for Review action appears disabled when edits are suggested for the Title field. FIXED IN GA

Backup and Restore

  • When Backup V2 is disabled and then a backup is created using Backup V1, the restore process from this backup generates the following error message in the log file although the restore is successful: WARNING: Failed to access directory “/data2/backup/pgbackup/backups/alation”: No such file or directory 2ERROR: Instance ‘alation’ does not exist in this backup catalog. FIXED IN GA