Overview¶
Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation
Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation
The latest Snowflake OCF connector package is available on the Connector Hub. Contact an Alation admin with access to the Customer Portal to download the connector from the Connectors section of the Portal (Customer Portal > Connectors > Alation Connector Hub).
Use the Snowflake OCF connector to catalog Snowflake data sources in Alation. This connector extracts Snowflake objects such as tables, columns, views, primary and foreign keys, and other metadata. You can search and find Snowflake objects, curate the corresponding catalog object pages, and understand the business transformation of their data using Lineage diagrams.
Team¶
The following administrators are required to install this connector:
Snowflake administrator:
Creates a service account with the required privileges to extract metadata.
Provides the JDBC URI.
Provides authentication information.
Assists in configuring QLI.
Assists in configuring SSO for Compose.
Alation administrator:
Installs the connector
Creates and configures a Snowflake data source in the catalog.
Scope¶
The table below lists the features supported by the connector.
Feature |
Scope |
Availability |
---|---|---|
Authentication |
||
Basic (username and password) |
Authentication with a service account created on the database using username and password |
|
Key pair authentication |
Authentication with the private-public key pair |
|
AWS Secrets Manager with Alation Agent |
Authentication using credentials an Alation Agent has retrieved from AWS Secrets Manager, for Alation Cloud Service on the cloud-native architecture only |
|
Metadata extraction (MDE) |
||
Default MDE |
Extraction of metadata from Snowflake based on default queries in the connector code |
|
Query-based MDE |
Extraction of metadata based on custom extraction queries provided by a user |
|
Popularity |
Indicator of the popularity (intensity of use) of a data object, such as a table or a column |
Yes |
Extracted metadata objects |
||
Schemas |
List of schemas |
|
Tables |
List of tables |
|
Columns |
List of columns |
|
Column data types |
Column data types |
|
Primary keys |
Primary key information for extracted tables |
|
Foreign keys |
Foreign key information for extracted tables |
|
Views |
List of views, including materialized views, secure views, and secure materialized views |
|
Source comments |
Extraction of Tables, Views, and Columns as source comments. |
|
External tables |
Extraction of external table metadata |
|
Stored procedures |
Stored procedure metadata Stored procedures will appear in search results |
|
Functions |
Function metadata, including Secure User-Defined Functions (UDF) Functions will appear in the search results |
|
Function Definitions |
Function definition metadata |
|
Tags |
Extraction of Snowflake tags |
|
Policies |
Extraction of row access policies and data masking policies Policy information will be available if Policy Center is enabled in the Governance App (paid feature) |
|
Sampling and Profiling |
||
Table sampling |
Retrieval of data samples from extracted tables |
|
Column sampling |
Retrieval of data samples from extracted columns |
|
Custom query-based table sampling |
Ability to use custom queries for sampling specific tables |
|
Custom query-based column sampling |
Ability to use custom queries for profiling specific columns |
|
Deep column profiling |
Profiling of columns with the calculation of value distribution stats |
|
Dynamic profiling |
Ability for individual users to connect with their own database accounts to retrieve table and column samples and profiles |
|
Query Log Ingestion (QLI) |
||
Table-based QLI |
Ingestion of query history based on a table or view that contains query history data |
|
Custom query-based QLI |
Ingestion of query history based on a custom query |
|
JOINs and filters |
Calculation of JOIN and filter information based on ingested query history |
|
Lineage |
||
Table-level lineage |
Auto-calculation of lineage based on query history ingested from QLI, MDE, and Compose queries |
|
External table file lineage |
Lineage for external tables |
|
Column-level lineage |
Calculation of lineage data at the column level Requires the column-level lineage parser add-on for Snowflake |
|
Compose |
||
Customer-managed (on-premise) Alation instances |
Compose for on-premise Alation instances |
|
Alation Cloud Service instances |
Compose on Alation Cloud Service instances: depending on your network configuration, you may need to use Alation Agent to connect to your data source Compose with Agent is supported from connector version 1.1.2.4595 |
|
SSO via OAuth |
Authentication in Compose using the OAuth protocol |
|