Release Notes 2025.3 (General Availability)

Note

The release notes on this page reflect changes to the Alation application.

RELEASE 2025.3

build 21.0.0.110347

Released September 3, 2025

Note

This release is available for all Alation instance types: customer-managed (on-premise) and Alation Cloud Service.

In this release:

Content Experience

Default Enablement of Document Hubs Feature Flags

The following feature flags are now enabled by default and are removed from the Admin Settings > Feature Configuration list. This doesn’t override the existing settings.

  • Document Hubs 1: Setup (Previously “Glossary Terms Setup”)

  • Document Hubs 2: Show Glossary Hub (Previously “Glossary Terms GA”)

  • Document Hubs 3: Enable Hub Creation (Public Preview)

  • Document Hubs 4: Performance Improvement (Previously “Glossary Terms Performance Improvement”)

  • Document Hubs 5: Document Total Count (Previously “Glossary Terms Total Count”) (AL-176418)

Note

The backend alation_conf feature flags for Document Hubs remain unchanged. Users on customer-managed instances who previously disabled Document Hubs will not be affected, and can enable the feature via alation_conf if desired. For Alation Cloud Service customers, these flags will be enabled by default, with temporary exceptions possible in special cases (for example, to support the transition from Glossaries to Article Groups).

Bulk Management of Documents in Document Hubs

Organizations manage a wide range of logical assets in Alation, such as glossaries, policies, reports, and data documentation.

Much of this content originates from external tools like spreadsheets, document repositories in SharePoint, Confluence, or legacy systems. You can now create, update, and delete large volumes of documents and folders in Alation using CSV uploads. Bulk Management provides a scalable, in-catalog approach for managing documents at scale. (AL-192028)

Curation

Always Receive Data Dictionary and Search Results Download Emails

Enhanced global email notification settings to allow sending data dictionaries and search results download emails even when the global email notification is turned off. (AL-200785)

Support of Custom Table Templates in Data Dictionary

Added support for fetching the custom fields from the respective “targeted” custom table templates. (AL-192955)

Compose

JDBC URI Validation in Connection Settings

Added support for JDBC URI validation when adding a new connection or editing an existing connection under Connection Settings in Compose. (AL-195532)

Catalog

Enhanced Filtering on Catalog Pages

Improved performance on the ELT model and Jobs Run tables on the ELT project catalog page. The child object filtering is disabled by default and is handled using a feature flag in Alation, alation.feature_flags.DEV_enable_catalog_service_child_filtering. (AL-200460)

Note

Alation Cloud Service customers can request server configuration changes through Alation Support.

Enhancement to Custom Asset Types

The Custom Asset Type feature (currently available in Private Beta since 2025.1.3) now supports querying custom asset types as separate tables within Alation Analytics, modifying custom asset type definitions, as well as adding custom fields to any custom asset. (AL-201951)

Data Products

Enhancements to Data Product Email Contact

Enhanced email notifications for the Data Products App so that user interactions such as providing feedback, asking a question, reporting a problem, or liking or disliking a data product would trigger an email notification to the Data Product owner. (AL-200050)

Broader Regional Support for Suggested Descriptions and Context API Availability

Alation expands support for the Suggestion Descriptions and Context API to the Asia Pacific: Mumbai (ap-south-1) region. (AL-179987)

Platform

Amazon Corretto Upgrade to 11.0.28.x.x

Customer-managed instances

The Amazon Corretto JDK used internally has been upgraded from version 11.0.27.x.x to 11.0.28.x.x to enhance application security. The JDK will be upgraded automatically during the Alation update to 2025.3. (AL-198598)

NGINX Upgrade to 1.29.x

Customer-managed instances

The NGINX version used internally on the server has been upgraded from version 1.27.x to 1.29.x due to end-of-life of the version 1.27.x. The package will be upgraded automatically during the Alation update to 2025.3. (AL-201143)

Admin Settings

Optional PKCE for Select OAuth Clients

Enhanced Alation’s OAuth implementation to support integrations with third-party tools that do not support Proof Key for Code Exchange (PKCE). By default, PKCE remains required for all OAuth clients. (AL-199945)

Public APIs

Data Products API

Added new filters, role and action, to the Get All Data Products API endpoint to filter data products with a specific role assigned or action permitted.

  • data_product_role: Returns only those data products where the user has a role assigned.

  • data_product_action: Returns only those data products where the user has a permitted action. (AL-199895)

Aggregated Context API

  • Added support for rate limiting in the Aggregated Context API endpoint. A warning message is included in the response header when API usage exceeds 90% of the allocated free API calls. (AL-199488)

  • Added usage tracking and enforcement for the free tier limit of 2000 API calls. (AL-199487)

Relational Integration API

Added the following PATCH methods in the Relational Integration API for schemas, tables, and columns to allow updating of multiple schemas, tables, and columns, respectively, for a data source denoted by ds_id, along with their custom fields.

  • Patch Schema (AL-198869)

  • Patch Table (AL-198049)

  • Patch Column (AL-198868)

Bug Fixes

Alation Analytics

  • Fixed an issue where deleting custom fields in Alation Analytics dimensional tables failed if the field didn’t exist in the underlying Snowflake table, leading to errors in tenant environments with mismatched schemas between Postgres and Snowflake. The deletion logic now includes a fallback mechanism to skip non-existent fields and continue processing remaining deletions, preventing the process from getting stuck. (AL-199146)

  • Fixed an issue where the Alation Analytics ETL job failed due to null timestamps and timezone mismatches in asset types (Connected Sheets and DBT Connector). (AL-198082)

  • Fixed an issue where Top Contributors data was visible to the authenticated users despite disabling the feature flag alation.feature_flags.enable_analytics_v2_leaderboard. (AL-196523)

Catalog

  • Fixed an issue on BI source pages where BI source titles containing an ampersand (&) were incorrectly displayed as &amp. (AL-198011)

Compose

  • Fixed an issue where duplicating a Compose private connection did not carry over the URI or correctly pre-fill the name field. (AL-200971)

  • Fixed an issue where the scheduled query run history was not visible to editors who were not the query owners. (AL-194511)

Content Experience

  • Fixed an issue where restoring folders in the Classic User Experience triggered an error after deletion. (AL-198378)

  • Fixed a browser tab display where an extra “&amp:” appeared in the title. Document titles are now properly unescaped, so values like “&” are correctly displayed as “&” in the browser’s title bar. (AL-198829)

  • Fixed an issue where policy group buttons in homepage custom links did not route to the correct resource. (AL-195869)

  • Fixed an issue where uploading a dictionary triggered a 404 error when the Document Hubs 3: Enable Hub Creation flag was disabled. (AL-192650)

  • Fixed an issue where deleted term IDs continued to appear in the glossary_link column in Alation Analytics. The table now updates correctly when links are removed. (AL-150161)

Curation

  • Fixed an issue where notification emails were not sent when users or groups were granted query permissions. (AL-199637)

Lineage

  • Fixed an issue where viewing upstream audit logs failed with a 500 error. Deleted objects are now filtered out correctly during impact analysis. (AL-192752)

  • Fixed an issue where bulk lineage uploads for file system directories failed due to incorrect path validation. (AL-189949)

  • Fixed an issue where the delete lineage script did not work with large volumes of data. The script now handles both migrated and non-migrated instances. (AL-189261)

  • Fixed an issue where SAP BO lineage parsing failed. The query parser logic has been corrected. (AL-184071)

  • Fixed an issue with column-level lineage for TEMP tables where the columns were getting mapped incorrectly. (AL-181513)

Open Connector Framework

  • Fixed an issue where the File System Catalog picker displayed raw FLAVOR_ICONS text instead of the correct icon when Unify Tags was enabled. (AL-200344)

  • Fixed an issue where custom field values (non-string types) did not appear in the History popup. Multipicker, date, and other types now display correctly. (AL-198730)

  • Fixed an issue where deleting an asset source failed to clear source instance and configuration data, causing upgrade issues. Deletion now fully removes all associated entries. (AL-198492)

  • Fixed an issue where BI source names were not properly encoded on the connector page. (AL-198011)

  • Fixed an issue in the SSRS OCF Connector where datasets and data sources with the same name caused missing metadata. The issue has been resolved using a new external ID format. For more information, see SSRS Connector Update: Resolving Missing Shared Data Sources Across Projects. (AL-136329)

  • Fixed an issue where Snowflake tag updates removed custom field options and values when the source-defined fields had no allowed values. (AL-191260)

Public APIs

  • Fixed an issue where the X-Next-Page header was missing from the Custom Field Value API endpoint. (AL-201033)

Other Fixes

  • Fixed an issue in workflows where the Under Review suggestion count included drafts from other users, leading to misleading counts. (AL-198274)

  • Fixed an issue where users encountered RST_STREAM errors when running QLI. Forward proxy tolerance has been increased. (AL-198153)

  • Fixed an issue where the conflict indicator showed 0 Conflicts in the Classic User Experience, leading to confusion. The indicator is now hidden when there are no actual conflicts. (AL-197581)

  • Fixed an issue where users couldn’t properly specify workflows for glossary objects when the document hub feature flags were partially enabled. (AL-196804)

  • Fixed an issue where the description field was missing for Sync Children for Tables in schema-level manual catalog sets in the New User Experience. (AL-196319)

  • Fixed an issue where the Tasks Inbox loaded slowly with over 600 tasks. Deleted or excluded objects are now properly filtered out. (AL-194955)

  • Fixed an issue where navigating to the next page in a user’s published queries list reverted back to the previous page. (AL-194016)

  • Fixed an issue where the number of queries shown on the table catalog page didn’t match the list due to duplicate rows from permission joins. (AL-193648)

  • Fixed an issue on the Customer Portal where upgradeable items were incorrectly shown for the Alation Cloud Service customers. (AL-137324)