Overview
What is Alation?
Alation offers enterprise data intelligence solutions, including data search & discovery, data governance, data stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation. Alation operates in thethe data catalog market. With its Behavioral Analysis Engine, inbuilt collaboration capabilities, and open interfaces, Alation combines machine…
Alation makes the data catalog easier
Alation Data Catalog
Release your data catalog from it's spreadsheet shackles and let it breathe the sweet air of Alation
A data catalog is a must
Alation Data Catalog
Early days, all on track.
Alation is built for Startup Governance Programs
* People say different words but mean the same thing > Centralized Business Glossary …
Alation Data Catalog Review
Alation is a solid choice for cataloging and data governance. They stand by their product.
Overall good data catalog product
Great data catalogue
First experience with cataloging
2.Provides …
Alation is a fantastic data governance and catalogue!
Alation Data Catalog - SQL made easy!
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Self-Service Analytics Guide
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is Alation?
Alation offers enterprise data intelligence solutions, including data search & discovery, data governance, data stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation. Alation operates in the data catalog market. With its Behavioral Analysis Engine, inbuilt collaboration capabilities, and open interfaces, Alation combines machine learning with human insight with the goal of tackle the most demanding challenges in data and metadata management.
The vendor states that more than 450 enterprises drive data culture, improve decision-making, and realize business outcomes with Alation, including AbbVie, American Family Insurance, Autozone, Cisco, Draft Kings, Exelon, Fifth Third Bank, Finnair, Munich Re, NASDAQ, Parexel, Pfizer, Salesforce, Virgin Australia, and Vistaprint.
Alation Screenshots
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Alation Competitors
Alation Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac, CentOS, RedHat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE Linux, Fedora, Amazon Linux |
Mobile Application | No |
Supported Languages | English |
Alation Downloadables
- How Alation’s Open Data Quality Initiative supports individual analysts and enterprises alike, with in-workflow notifications of DQ issues for users, and the freedom to partner with DQ vendors.
- Alation for Self-Service Intelligence: Self-service starts with the discovery of trustworthy data. This describes how Alation can help find and identify data quickly to make timely decisions.
- The Alation Data Governance App simplifies how organizations enable secure access to data in hybrid & multi-cloud environments.
- Alation Cloud Service Solution Brief: Powering Data Intelligence
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Reviews and Ratings
(42)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-16 of 16)Alation - A Good Choice for Data Cataloguing
- Increased data collaboration and knowledge transfer among data workers
- Improved data access and data searching capabilities
- Data mapping can be confusing
- Support service needs improvement
Alation makes the data catalog easier
- Ability to link objects using the @ symbol. It allows us to easily provide a way to get more information or context. So if the business concept is part of a hierarchy, we can link to the other terms in that hierarchy.
- The customization is really helpful. Most object types have robust customization options. Others are less so, but it is improving. We've created multiple custom fields to support our data governance framework.
- The search feature with filtering is helpful in narrowing down what you're looking for.
- Term tables are not yet in the Alation Analytics area. This makes it difficult to manage the creation of terms in the various business glossaries.
- We've had some issues with the connectors, but Alation has been helpful in trying to get them to work.
- The BI area is not as robust as the rdbms area. Tableau dashboards are listed as folders which can be confusing for users.
Alation Data Catalog
- The User Interface is very easy to navigate making it user-friendly for all users.
- The built in connectors allows for easy connection to important data sources and other tools.
- Customization tools are a plus when it comes to combining different business units.
- They have a bunch of learning material and documentation, especially Alation Community where you can find solutions to problems you are facing.
- Adding Connectors is a little bit difficult. If they were able to make it a little more user friendly, that would be helpful.
Release your data catalog from it's spreadsheet shackles and let it breathe the sweet air of Alation
- Entering and editing content. The UI is easy to use and understand.
- Browsing and searching for content is intuitive and detailed.
- Adding data sources is easy to do through the UI without having to fiddle with configuration files.
- The lineage UI is not ready for primetime. I would not recommend this feature for my users at this time because it's too complex to understand and is visually difficult to track down specific paths.
- The underlying infrastructure of the on-premise version of the software is fragile and unnecessarily complicated, using too many modules and technologies.
- The license model of the on-premise version contains too many add-ons. I would like to pay one price and get all of the features.
I would not recommend it for tracking lineage as that feature is immature and difficult to use.
A data catalog is a must
- integrating with other programs (SQL Server, Tableau)
- the ability to link terms to data elements and queries
- searchability
- the ability to enforce uniqueness of term names is missing
- need more customization options on glossaries
- better home page customization options (less scripting required)
Alation Data Catalog
- Business Glossary
- Search feature
- Data source management
- Lineage connections between different data sources
- Glossary links (from one glossary to another)
I'm less inclined to use the 'direct connection' via Alation to data sources, mainly for decoupling dependencies for any production supporting applications with Alation (if Alation goes down, we don't want it to take the connection down). But it is a great tool for putting the producers and consumers in touch with each other to arrange the connection.
Early days, all on track.
- Right Start
- University and supportive training materials
- Intuitive interface
- Support for Microsoft legacy products such as SSIS would be great
- Physical presence in New Zealand would be great, virtual contact is okay but may add time to task completion / consolidation of learning
- Simple statements on systems / environments / protocols supported by connectors would be great up-front to inform decision making.
- Discovery of data is great
- Notations work well
- Implementation support gives a lot of confidence to the user group
Alation is built for Startup Governance Programs
* People say different words but mean the same thing > Centralized Business Glossary for reference translation
* I dont know what data exists > Automated metadata extraction provides real time look at what data assets are out there
* I dont know what the nuances/meaning of data is > Curation of Data dictionary allows data teams to add definitions, calculations and more
* I dont know who the owners of a report are to request a change or get more context > Alation allows you to document and assign ownership for data assets
* I dont know what Data Assets are classified as sensitive data or subject to applicable to legal regulations > Alation allows for cataloging of data assets using rule sets, for ease of classification
- User friendly interface
- Customer and Sales Support
- API
- Filtering in Search
- Customization in Documentation Display
- Per User / Connector Licensing
- Startup governance programs
- Less technical user base
- High focus on curation abilities
- vetting/approval workflows in business signoff
- Non microsoft stack
- Complex governance structure
- Advanced user base
- Heavy reliance on ACTION based workflows
Alation Data Catalog Review
- Organization
- Customization
- Ease of use
- The PowerBI connector could be easier to use
- Data Profiling
- Data Quality
Alation is a solid choice for cataloging and data governance. They stand by their product.
- Easy to navigate
- Easy to curate metadata
- Automates metadata ingestion
- Excellent support from sales team after the sale
- Reporting
- Fine tuning exports for data curation
- Ability to make mass edits within the interface without another add on product
If you want a full integrated, powerful lineage solution, Alation requires add on products and their partners are not the best choice for automated lineage without manual components for some highly used types of connections like SSIS.
Overall good data catalog product
- upload of data dictionary
- natural language search
- easy to use UI
- articles and tag facility
- more formats to upload data dictionary like excel, csv(without having to enclose data in rich text or html)
- email notification when someone assigns/asks questions to you using "conversation"
Great data catalogue
- Browsing through database
- Quick access to SQL editor
- Sharing queries with other
- Stability of the SQL editor
- UI of the SQL editor
First experience with cataloging
2.Provides easy access to metadata within one tool with no necessity to request specific accesses to separate data sources.
It hepls analysts and other team members to find data which suits them best to solve their business cases (create/improve product, create reports etc).
3.Represents information about stewards, owners and other responsible people/teams around each data source.
4.Gives an oppurtunity to write articles/terms on different topics and link them with actual technical metadata.
- Easy search between different objects with Advanced search.
- AI generates titles. Majority of them are suitable.
- Stewardship dashboard really helps stewards to work with sources they are responsible for.
- There is a flexibility to add custom fields to objects` pages.
- Users with no admin roles have no possibility to see the latest successfull metadata exrtaction. At out bank users are really interested in this informaton.
- Viewers, not stewards, will be more motivated in contributing to Data catalog (especially describing metadata) if there is a some reward system. Yes, now we can see top contributors within Alation Analytics Dashboard, but for this purpose we need to go to this part of Data Catalog. What about some medals/bagdes, which will be shown near personal name?
- There is no solution how to show data source as single source, when it has a microservice architecture and it consists of many databases? Now, for Alation DC, 1 database = 1 data source, so how should we connect, for example, 5 databases, which is known as one system?
1.Collecting metadata in one place with easy access to its.2. Providing possibility to find metadata by techical names as well as business description. It`s possible to search among all objects being on Advanced search page or to search certain schema/table/column being on respective objects` pages.
Where it is less appropriate: 1.There is a lineage functionality, but it shows lineage mostly for views within one data source. It`s impossible to see the lineage for any table viewer is interested in and the one way to do this - create lineage manually, what can do only Admins.
Alation is a fantastic data governance and catalogue!
- Data Governance
- Lineage
- Self help data research
- Menu navigation can be complex
- Price is steep
- Alation Everywhere isn’t available on all license structures
Alation Data Catalog - SQL made easy!
- Data Analyses
- Queries
- Data export
- SQL
- additional help tools
- guided building
- debugging
Best data exploration tool
- Query builder
- Entity relationship
- Metadata
- Conversations
- Data flow
- Impact analysis
- User experience