Connector Overview

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

The SAS Base OCF connector should be used to catalog Base SAS data sets in Alation. The connector ingests metadata from data files grouped into libraries and leverages the Base SAS engine.

A SAS data set is a SAS file stored in a library that SAS software creates and processes. A SAS data set consists in data arranged in rows (observations) and columns (variables). Alation reads the data set files with the extensions .sas7bdat (tables), .sas7bndx (indexes), and .sas7bvew (views) from SAS libraries and represents the metadata as schemas, tables, views, and columns searchable through the Alation user interface.

The connection is established to a SAS Workspace Server in your SAS system using a JDBC driver for SAS. To enable Alation to connect, your SAS solution should include an offering that allows connections to the SAS Workspace Server from a remote application, in addition to Base SAS.

Note

The connector does not support direct connections to cloud-based SAS solutions and cannot connect directly to SAS Cloud or SAS Viya.

The connector is available as a Zip file that can be uploaded and installed in the Alation application. The latest connector package can be downloaded from the Alation Customer Portal. Ask an Alation admin with access to Customer Portal to download the connector from the Connectors section (Customer Portal > Connectors).

Team

The following administrators are required to install this connector:

  • Alation administrator:

    • Installs the connector.

    • Creates and configures a SAS data source in the catalog.

  • SAS administrator:

    • Provides a service account (username and password) with the necessary privileges.

    • Provides the JDBC URI to access metadata.

Scope

The table below shows which metadata objects can be extracted by the connector and which operations are supported.

Feature

Scope

Availability

Authentication

Basic

Authentication with a service account (username and password)

Yes

LDAP

No

Kerberos and keytab

No

SSL

No

Metadata Extraction (MDE)

Default MDE

Extraction of metadata based on default extraction queries in the connector code

Yes

Custom query-based MDE

Extraction of metadata based on extraction queries provided by user

Yes

Popularity

Indicator of the popularity (intensity of use) of a data object, such as a table or a column

Yes

Extracted metadata objects

Data source

Data source object in Alation that is parent to the extracted metadata

Yes

Schemas

List of schemas (schemas represent SAS libraries)

Yes

Tables

List of tables

Yes

Columns

List of columns

Yes

Column data types

Column data types

Yes

Views

List of views

Yes

Source comments

Source comments

No

Primary keys

Primary key information for extracted tables

Yes

Foreign keys

Foreign key information for extracted tables

No

Functions

Functions

No

Sampling and Profiling

Table sampling

Retrieval of data samples from extracted tables

Yes

Column sampling

Retrieval of data samples from extracted columns

Yes

Deep column profiling

On-demand profiling of specific columns with the calculation of value distribution stats

Yes

Dynamic profiling

On-demand table and column profiling by individual users who use their own database accounts to retrieve the profiles

Yes

Custom query-based table sampling

Ability to use custom queries for sampling specific tables

Yes

Custom query-based column profiling

Ability to use custom queries for profiling specific columns

Yes

Query Log Ingestion (QLI)

No

Lineage

Automatic lineage generation

Auto-calculation of lineage based on query history ingested from Compose

Yes

Compose

Customer-managed (on-premise) Alation instances

Yes

Alation Cloud Service instances (no Alation Agent)

Yes

Alation Cloud Service instances (with Alation Agent)

No

Basic Compose authentication

Authentication in Compose with username and password

Yes

Limitations

  • Schema and table names created through Compose are converted to upper case even if users use lower case when creating them.

  • The view SQL is not extracted from views created through Compose, as it is not captured in the dictionary tables.