Configure Connection to Data Source¶
Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation
Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation
After you install the PostgreSQL OCF connector, you must configure the connection to the PostgreSQL data source.
The various steps involved in configuring the PostgreSQL data source connection setting are:
Provide Access¶
Go to the Access tab on the Settings page of your PostgreSQL data source, set the data source visibility using these options:
Public Data Source — The data source is visible to all users of the catalog.
Private Data Source — The data source is visible to the users allowed access to the data source by Data Source Admins.
You can add new Data Source Admin users in the Data Source Admins section.
Connect to Data Source¶
To connect to the data source, you must perform these steps:
Important
The Alation user interface displays standard configuration settings for credentials and connection information stored in the Alation database. If your organization has configured Azure KeyVault or AWS Secrets Manager to hold such information, the user interface will change to include the following buttons adjacent to the respective fields:
By default, you see the user interface for Standard. In the case of Vault, instead of the actual credential information, you must select the source and provide the corresponding key. For details, see Configure Secrets for OCF Connector Settings.
Provide the JDBC URI¶
Before using the JDBC URI format, understand the JDBC URI format and parameters for the PostgreSQL OCF connector.
URI Format¶
When building the URI, include the following components:
Hostname or IP of the instance
Port number
Database name
URI format:
postgresql://<host_name>:<port_number>/<database_name>
Note
If you don’t include a port number in the URI, Alation uses the default port 5432.
Example:
postgresql://ifac-pgsql.ceyrldata.us-west-2.amazonaws.com:5432/postgres
Provide the JDBC URI in Alation¶
To provide the JDBC URI in the Alation UI, perform these steps:
From Alation version 2023.3.4 and connector version 1.2.0
On the Settings page of your PostgreSQL data source, go to the General Settings tab.
In the Provide the JDBC URI section, enter the JDBC URI.
Follow the correct JDBC URI format (
postgresql://<host_name>:<port_number>/<database_name>).Click Save.
On the Settings page of your PostgreSQL data source, go to the General Settings tab.
Go to the Connector Settings > Datasource connection section and enter the JDBC URI.
Follow the correct JDBC URI format (
postgresql://<host_name>:<port_number>/<database_name>).Click Save.
Configure Authentication¶
For metadata extraction (MDE), profiling and sampling, and query log ingestion (QLI), the connector supports Basic authentication (username and password).
Basic and LDAP authentications require a service account (see Prerequisites).
Configure Basic Authentication¶
To configure Basic authentication, perform these steps:
From Alation version 2023.3.4 and connector version 1.2.0
On the Settings page of PostgreSQL data source, go to the General Settings tab.
Under the Configure authentication step, enter the username and password for basic authentication.
Click Save.
On the Settings page of your PostgreSQL data source, click on the General Settings tab.
Go to the Connector Settings > Datasource Connection section and enter the username and password for basic authentication.
Click Save.
Note
To use secure your connection using SSL, see Configure SSL Connection.
Configure LDAP Authentication¶
To configure LDAP authentication, perform these steps:
From Alation version 2023.3.4 and connector version 1.2.0
On the Settings page of PostgreSQL data source, go to the General Settings tab.
Under the Configure authentication step, enter the username and password of the service account.
Click Save.
On the Settings page of your PostgreSQL data source, click on the General Settings tab.
Go to the Connector Settings > Datasource Connection section and enter the username and password of the service account.
Click Save.
Note
To use secure your connection using SSL, see Configure SSL Connection.
Configure SSL Connection¶
To configure SSL connection, perform these steps:
From Alation version 2023.3.4 and connector version 1.2.0
On the Settings page of PostgreSQL data source, go to the General Settings tab.
Under the Configure authentication step, turn on the Enable SSL toggle button.
Upload the SSL certificate and provide the Truststore password for the SSL certificate.
Note
To enable SSL connection for PostgreSQL on Amazon EC2 and Enterprise, use a CRT certificate.
To enable SSL connection for PostgreSQL RDS, use a PEM certificate.
The password will be deleted if the data source connection is deleted.
Click Save.
On the Settings page of your PostgreSQL data source, click on the General Settings tab.
Go to the Connector Settings > Datasource Connection section and select Enable SSL.
Upload the SSL certificate and provide the Truststore password for the SSL certificate.
Note
To enable SSL connection for PostgreSQL RDS, use a PEM certificate.
The password will be deleted if the data source connection is deleted.
Click Save.
Test the Connection¶
The connection test checks database connectivity. Alation uses the JDBC URI to connect to the database and to confirm when the connection is established.
After specifying the JDBC URI and configuring authentication, test the connection.
To validate the network connectivity, go to General Settings > Test Connection of the Settings page of your PostgreSQL data source and click Test.
A dialog box appears confirming the status of the connection test.
Configure Additional Connection Settings¶
Apart from the mandatory configurations that you perform to connect to the data source in the General Settings tab, you can configure the following additional settings:
Configure Additional Data Source Connections¶
Alation can associate objects in a data source with objects in another source in the catalog through lineage. For example, you can show lineage between your data source and BI sources that use its data.
Provide additional connection information for the data source to see lineage across multiple sources on the Lineage chart.
For Alation version 2023.3.4 and connector version 1.2.0
To enter additional data source connection details, go to General Settings > Advanced settings of the Settings page of your PostgreSQL connector and enter the connection URL.
Use the following format:
<host>:<port>You can provide multiple values as a comma-separated list:
<host1>:<port1>,<host2>:<port2>For example:
10.13.71.216:1541,sever.com:1542
On the Application Settings section of General Settings tab, provide the host and port information in the BI Connection Info field.
This parameter is used to generate lineage between the current data source and another source in the catalog, for example a BI source that retrieves data from the underlying database. The parameter accepts host and port information of the corresponding BI data source connection.
Use the following format: <host>:<port>
You can provide multiple values as a comma-separated list:
<host1>:<port1>,<host2>:<port2>
For example:
10.13.71.216:1541,sever.com:1542
For more details, see BI Connection Info.
Enable or Disable Automatic Lineage Generation¶
You can enable or disable the lineage for the data source to be generated automatically during metadata extraction, query log ingestion, and from Data Definition Language queries run by users in Compose.
For Alation version 2023.3.4 and connector version 1.2.0
Go to General Settings > Advanced settings of the Settings page of your PostgreSQL data source and enable or disable the Disable automatic lineage generation toggle.
Disable the Disable automatic lineage generation toggle when you want to automatically generate the lineage.
Enable this option when you do not want lineage to be automatically generated and prefer to create lineage manually or using an API.
On the Application Settings section of General Settings tab, disable the Disable automatic lineage generation toggle when you want to automatically generate the lineage.
Enable this option when you do not want lineage to be automatically generated and prefer to create lineage manually or using an API.
By default, automatic lineage generation is enabled.
Enable or Disable Obfuscate Literals¶
You can hide literal values from queries ingested with query log ingestion and displayed on the Queries tab of a schema and table catalog objects.
On the General Settings tab enable or disable the Obfuscate literals toggle.
When enabled, literal values are substituted with placeholder values. Disable this option when you want literal values in queries to be visible to users.
By default, this option is disabled.
Configure Logging¶
To set the logging level for your PostgreSQL OCF data source logs, perform these steps:
From Alation version 2023.3.4 and connector version 1.2.0
On the Settings page of your PostgreSQL OCF data source, go to General Settings > Connector logs.
Select a logging level for the connector logs and click Save.
The available log levels are based on the Log4j framework.
On the Settings page of your PostgreSQL OCF data source, go to Logging configuration section of General Settings tab.
Select a logging level for the connector logs and click Save.
The available log levels are based on the Log4j framework.
You can view the connector logs in Admin Settings > Server Admin > Manage Connectors > PostgreSQL OCF connector.
Configure Add-On OCF Connector¶
PostgreSQL OCF connector supports dbt and Fivetran add-on connectors.
Configure Add-On OCF Connector for dbt¶
The dbt connector can be used as an add-on with another OCF connector to extract and catalog descriptions and lineage from dbt models, sources, and columns in dbt Core or dbt Cloud. See Add-On OCF Connector for dbt on how to use this connector.
Configure Add-On OCF Connector for Fivetran¶
The Fivetran connector can be used as an add-on with another OCF connector to extract and catalog descriptions and lineage from dbt models, sources, and columns in Fivetran. See Add-On OCF Connector for dbt on how to use this connector.