Share and Access Queries - 2022.4 and Earlier

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

Applies to releases V R6 (5.10.x) to 2022.4

Note

This page is about sharing and accessing queries in version 2022.4 and earlier. In version 2023.1, we introduced a feature for granular query permissions that substantially changes sharing and access for queries. See Share and Access Queries - 2023.1 and Later for details.

In Alation, you can collaborate with others on queries leveraging the expertise of your colleagues and institutional knowledge of the data. There are several ways in which you can promote your queries and involve fellow Alation users into query collaboration:

  • Inviting others to edit your query code as Authors

  • Sharing queries and query results

  • Publishing queries to surface them in the Alation catalog

  • @-mentioning queries in articles and conversations

Based on the query  access  level, a user can be:

  • Owner A user who has full power over the query and ability to perform any action. Query ownership can be transferred to another user, but there can only be one query owner at a time.

Note

Any Compose user can own queries: you are the owner of the queries you create and of the queries for which other users transferred ownership to you.

  • Author A user who is given permission to edit, run, share and add collaborators to a query. Even though a query can only have one owner, there can be multiple authors contributing to the development of the query code. The edit access can be granted for each specific query but not in bulk.

  • Viewer Anyone in Alation can see queries created by other users if they have access to the data source used in this query. It does not matter if a query is published or unpublished. Currently, Alation does not restrict users from viewing queries based on the publishing status. However, viewers cannot edit queries unless they request and receive access as an author.

In a few scenarios, a Server Admin who is not an author on a query can intervene in the collaboration process. For example, Server Admins can invite collaborators or transfer ownership, but they will not be able to change the query code unless explicitly given access by the current owner or authors.

Depending on your access level, you can perform the following actions with a query.

IN COMPOSE

Owner

Author

Viewer

Server Admin

View

Edit

View version history

Publish

Unpublish

Schedule and unschedule

View scheduling information

Request access

Not applicable

Not applicable

Add Collaborators/Give Access

Remove Collaborators

Transfer ownership

Share

For view only

View who your query results are shared with

Run

Export

Explain

Clone

Delete

IN CATALOG

Owner

Author

Viewer

Server Admin

View scheduling information

Toggle the scheduling on and off (in Query Search)

Transfer Ownership

Add Collaborators / Give Access