Snowflake OCF Connector: Overview

The Snowflake OCF connector was developed by Alation and is available as a Zip file that can be uploaded and installed in the Alation application.

To download the Snowflake OCF connector package, go to the Alation Connector Hub available from the Customer Portal. Go to Customer Portal > Connectors > Alation Connector Hub. Only Alation users with access to the Customer Portal can access the Alation Connector Hub. If you don’t have access to the Customer Portal, contact Alation Support.

This connector should be used to catalog Snowflake data sources in Alation. It extracts Snowflake objects such as tables, columns, views, primary and foreign keys, and other metadata. Users will be able to 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
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
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
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