Overview

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

The connector for Talend is available for download from the Connector Hub on the Alation Customer Portal. Follow instructions in this documentation to install or manage the connector.

Talend is a data virtualization software that combines data from multiple data sources and makes it available to users. Alation uses the Talend connector to catalog metadata from various data sources in Talend. Use this connector to catalog Talend as a data source on Alation on-premise and Cloud Service instances. It extracts and catalogs such database objects as jobs, components, columns, schemas, and tables. After the metadata is extracted, it is represented in the data catalog as a hierarchy of catalog pages under the parent data source. Alation users can leverage the full catalog functionality to search for and find the extracted metadata and curate the corresponding catalog pages.

Team

You may need the assistance of your database administrator to configure this data source.

  • Talend administrator:

    • Creates a service account for Alation.

    • Provides the GitHub path for Talend metadata files.

    • Provides a GitHub access token for the repository where the Talend metadata files are committed.

    • Provides the authentication information and assists in configuring OAuth authentication.

  • Alation Server Admin:

    • Ensures that Alation Connector Manager is installed and running or installs it.

    • Installs the connector.

    • Creates and configures the Talend data source in the catalog.

    • Performs initial extraction and prepares the data source for Alation users.

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

OAuth

Authentication with the GitHub Access Token and remote server.

Metadata extraction (MDE)

Default MDE

Extraction of metadata from Talend

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

Views

List of views

Not applicable

Source comments

Source comments

Not applicable

Primary keys

Primary key information for extracted tables

Foreign keys

Foreign key information for extracted tables

Functions

Extraction of function metadata

Function Definitions

Extraction of function definition metadata

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) - Not supported

Lineage

Table-level Lineage

Table-level lineage for Talend components

Cross-system Lineage

Lineage for cross-system

Column-level lineage

Calculation of lineage data at the column level

Compose - Not supported

Lineage

Data Source or Target

Table-level Lineage

Cross-system Lineage

Column-level Lineage

Oracle

Microsoft SQL Server

MySQL

Snowflake

Salesforce

Object Mapping

Talend Object

Alation Object

Column

Talend Column

Schema

Talend Job

Table

Source component, Target component, Transformation component