Versions Before 2.3.0¶
Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation
Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation
Important
This section is applicable to Alation versions prior to 2024.1.4 or connector versions prior to 2.3.0.
You can configure metadata extraction (MDE) for a BI Server source on the General Settings tab of the Settings page.
Configure Metadata Extraction¶
To configure MDE, perform the following steps:
Go to the General Settings tab of the Settings page of your BI Server source.
In the Application Settings section, provide the following information:
Parameter
Description
Enable Raw Dump or Replay
The options in this drop list can be used to dump the extracted metadata into files in order to debug extraction issues before ingesting the metadata into Alation. This feature can be used during testing in case there are issues with MDE. It breaks extraction into two steps: first, the extracted metadata is dumped into files and can be viewed; and second, it can be ingested from the files into Alation. It is recommended to keep this feature enabled only if debugging is required.
Enable Raw Metadata Dump: Select this option to save extracted metadata into a folder for debugging purposes. The dumped data will be saved in four files (attribute.dump, function.dump, schema.dump, table.dump) in folder opt/alation/site/tmp/ inside Alation shell.
Enable Ingestion Replay: Select this option to ingest the metadata from the dump files into Alation.
Off: Disable the Raw Metadata Dump or Replay feature. Extracted metadata will be ingested into Alation.
Click Save.
In the Connector Settings section, provide the following information:
Parameter
Description
Power BI Workspace Extraction Batch Size
Provide the workspace extraction batch size. Alation supports a maximum of 100 batches per extraction. Reducing this parameter will increase the number of API calls against the Azure Power BI Scanner to fetch the data, but decrease the size of data fetched during each call.
Enable Apps Extraction
Enable this checkbox to extract the apps from Azure Power BI Scanner.
Enable Report Fields Extraction
Enable this checkbox to extract the report fields from Azure Power BI Scanner. Additionally, enabling this option also enables Column Level Lineage (CLL) to work in supported Alation versions (2024.1.2 onwards). However, enabling this option increases the extraction time.
Enable Extraction For Service Principal
Enable the checkbox to enable service principal-based extraction and listing of projects that the user has access to view. - This option is not available in connector version prior to 2.4.0 and also from version 2.2.4 and newer
Pause Extraction if API limit is reached
Enable this checkbox to pause the extraction if the API limit is reached. The extraction will be paused until the API limit is refreshed which will take a maximum of one hour time. If this checkbox is disabled, the extraction will complete if the API limit is reached. The metadata that was extracted before this time will be added to the Catalog. Extraction will not resume when the API limit is refreshed.
Click Save.
Under Extraction Settings, turn on Selective Extraction if required. Selective extraction settings are used to apply a filter to include or exclude a list of projects.
Click Get List of Projects to first fetch the list of projects.
The status of the Get Projects action is logged in the Job History table at the bottom of the Settings page.
Once the folder synchronization is successful, a drop-down list of projects will become enabled. Select one or more projects to apply the filter.
Check if you are using the desired filter option. Available filter options are described below:
Filter Option
Description
Extract all Projects except
Extract metadata from all projects except from the Folders selected.
Extract only these Projects
Extract metadata from only the selected Projects.
Click Run Extraction Now to extract metadata. The status of the extraction action is also logged in the Job History table at the bottom of the page.
Note
Extraction of source description is supported from connector version 1.4.3.
Note
Extraction of dataflow objects is supported from connector version 2.0.1. See Dataflows for more details.
If you wish to automatically update the metadata in the Catalog, under Automated and Manual Extraction, turn on Enable Automated Extraction and select the day and time when metadata must be extracted. The metadata extraction will be automatically scheduled to run at the selected day and time.