Connector Overview¶
Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation
Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation
The SAS Base OCF connector should be used to catalog Base SAS data sets in Alation. The connector ingests metadata from data files grouped into libraries and leverages the Base SAS engine.
A SAS data set is a SAS file stored in a library that SAS software creates and processes. A SAS data set consists in data arranged in rows (observations) and columns (variables). Alation reads the data set files with the extensions .sas7bdat (tables), .sas7bndx (indexes), and .sas7bvew (views) from SAS libraries and represents the metadata as schemas, tables, views, and columns searchable through the Alation user interface.
The connection is established to a SAS Workspace Server in your SAS system using a JDBC driver for SAS. To enable Alation to connect, your SAS solution should include an offering that allows connections to the SAS Workspace Server from a remote application, in addition to Base SAS.
Note
The connector does not support direct connections to cloud-based SAS solutions and cannot connect directly to SAS Cloud or SAS Viya.
The connector is available as a Zip file that can be uploaded and installed in the Alation application. The latest connector package can be downloaded from the Alation Customer Portal. Ask an Alation admin with access to Customer Portal to download the connector from the Connectors section (Customer Portal > Connectors).
Team¶
The following administrators are required to install this connector:
Alation administrator:
Installs the connector.
Creates and configures a SAS data source in the catalog.
SAS administrator:
Provides a service account (username and password) with the necessary privileges.
Provides the JDBC URI to access metadata.
Scope¶
The table below shows which metadata objects can be extracted by the connector and which operations are supported.
Feature |
Scope |
Availability |
|---|---|---|
Authentication |
||
Basic |
Authentication with a service account (username and password) |
Yes |
LDAP |
No |
|
Kerberos and keytab |
No |
|
SSL |
No |
|
Metadata Extraction (MDE) |
||
Default MDE |
Extraction of metadata based on default extraction queries in the connector code |
Yes |
Custom query-based MDE |
Extraction of metadata based on extraction queries provided by user |
Yes |
Popularity |
Indicator of the popularity (intensity of use) of a data object, such as a table or a column |
Yes |
Extracted metadata objects |
||
Data source |
Data source object in Alation that is parent to the extracted metadata |
Yes |
Schemas |
List of schemas (schemas represent SAS libraries) |
Yes |
Tables |
List of tables |
Yes |
Columns |
List of columns |
Yes |
Column data types |
Column data types |
Yes |
Views |
List of views |
Yes |
Source comments |
Source comments |
No |
Primary keys |
Primary key information for extracted tables |
Yes |
Foreign keys |
Foreign key information for extracted tables |
No |
Functions |
Functions |
No |
Sampling and Profiling |
||
Table sampling |
Retrieval of data samples from extracted tables |
Yes |
Column sampling |
Retrieval of data samples from extracted columns |
Yes |
Deep column profiling |
On-demand profiling of specific columns with the calculation of value distribution stats |
Yes |
Dynamic profiling |
On-demand table and column profiling by individual users who use their own database accounts to retrieve the profiles |
Yes |
Custom query-based table sampling |
Ability to use custom queries for sampling specific tables |
Yes |
Custom query-based column profiling |
Ability to use custom queries for profiling specific columns |
Yes |
Query Log Ingestion (QLI) |
No |
|
Lineage |
||
Automatic lineage generation |
Auto-calculation of lineage based on query history ingested from Compose |
Yes |
Compose |
||
Customer-managed (on-premise) Alation instances |
Yes |
|
Alation Cloud Service instances (no Alation Agent) |
Yes |
|
Alation Cloud Service instances (with Alation Agent) |
No |
|
Basic Compose authentication |
Authentication in Compose with username and password |
Yes |
Limitations¶
Schema and table names created through Compose are converted to upper case even if users use lower case when creating them.
The view SQL is not extracted from views created through Compose, as it is not captured in the dictionary tables.