Release Notes 4.16.0

Release 4.16.0

New Features

  • If you have Tableau 10.4+, Alation can be configured so Endorsements on Tableau Data Source (TDS) pages in Alation Catalog will be surfaced as Certifications on Tableau Server.

  • It is now possible to configure and extract HDFS data lakes much like Alation could with Amazon S3 before. This functionality is in Beta and behind a Flag for Data Lakes/File Systems.Any distribution/version of HDFS that supports the WebHDFS REST protocol is supported, but some have been more thoroughly tested than others. Check out the Install Guide and talk to your Solutions Engineer.

Improvements

  • If your admins do some set-up, you can see Expressions and Values for MicroStrategy reports as well as custom fields on their catalog pages (but not Lineage).

  • You can now decide whether or not to receive e-mail notifications when you’re mentioned in articles and conversations. Go to the Notifications tab under Account Settings to flip the switch.

  • On Table pages for Vertica data sources, we show new technical metadata fields from the database under Properties on the right side: Owner, Last Updated, and Created Time.

Bug Fixes

  • Mentioning Groups in articles and conversations will now cause notification e-mails to be sent to group members. Previously, this did not work properly.

  • Previously, when a scheduled query was triggered to run significantly after the actual scheduled time (by more than 30 minutes, by default), the owner of the scheduled query would receive an email with a vague message about a failure to run the query. Now they’ll receive a clearer message in the email about how the server missed the window of acceptable time for scheduled query execution.

    • by default, the “acceptable delay” is set to 30 minutes. This threshold can be changed by setting alation_conf alation.query_exec.scheduling.delay_tolerance

  • Search with deduplication now runs more performantly. Previously, a large number of network requests could be generated by such searches.

  • Now accurate column-counts will be shown for tables with colons in their names. Previously, such tables would always be listed as having 0 columns.

  • When titles are being edited within Alation tabular views, their cells now display consistently across browsers. Previously, Firefox and IE displayed differently.

  • Better Error Handling on page load:

    • Now, the correct indicator will be shown when the network connection is lost. Previously, such a connectivity issue would show up as a 404 error, suggesting that the desired page didn’t exist.

    • You’ll now more consistently see a 500 Error when there’s an issue from Alation Server. Previously, some server errors would be mistakenly surfaced as “connection errors.”

Admin Release Notes

New Features

  • Query Log Ingestion now works for

    • PostgreSQL

    • Snowflake SQL

    • SAP HANA SQL

  • We now offer a public API to get the latest visible query result ID.  API Documentation and examples can be found here.

Improvements

  • If you turn on a back-end flag by running alation_conf alation.feature_flags.enable_generic_bi -s True  then all MicroStrategy Report Sources created after that point will show Values and Expressions and support Custom Fields. The lineage tabs on those pages will be disabled, however. Note: the changes will not be applied to previously added sources, only to those added while the flag is on.*

  • You can now set a Display Name in Admin Settings > Email and Admin Emails will show up as from the value in that field. If you manage multiple instances (e.g. separate Staging and Prod servers) you can include indicators in the display names on each to more readily distinguish them in your inbox.

  • You can now see Database type in Data Source Settings, and will also get a more detailed error message displayed if the wrong URI is entered. This is especially useful when using Compose over a virtual source.

  • In Admin Settings > Misc, you can choose to hide the Tile View of the Reports Card in the Left-Hand Navigation bar, leaving just the name-based browser.

Bug Fixes

  • When rejecting a pending user, the confirmation modal no longer persists after you push Confirm.

  • Data profiling now works in Hive for tables and columns with names which are also reserved keywords. This support was included in 4.14.0 for other data sources.

  • Metadata GET API for Vertica sources now consistently works. Previously, it would fail if a database name was specified in the URI.

  • Metadata extraction is now more robust; previously, certain combinations of metadata changes could break Metadata Extraction for database types that have a multi-part schema names.

  • When rejecting a pending user, the confirmation modal no longer persists after you push Confirm.

  • When you select Admin Settings > Misc > Prepare Encrypted Logs for Download, a disk space check is performed first. Previously, the application would crash if there was insufficient space.

  • We can now extract Tableau Workbooks with names that include non-ASCII characters. Previously, users would see an encoding error.

  • Alation now properly handles case sensitivity for Teradata datasources when specifying schema exclusions in Extraction settings.

  • Previously, File System extraction would report the total number of objects extracted and call them all files. Now, the interface clarifies that the number represents the total of both files or directories.