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