Virtual Data Sources

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

A Virtual Data Sources (VDS) is a data source that is populated with metadata using one of following methods:

  • importing data from a source file.

  • using the API to automatically extract data using a built-in connector.

Creating a VDS makes it possible to catalog a data source for which Alation does not provide a designated connector. Additionally, creating a VDS makes it possible to catalog a data source if you cannot use the database connection. For example, you might create a VDS if you cannot establish a network connection to the database or cannot gain priveleged access to the Alation database service account.

This section describes how to define a schema, add, populate and view a VDS.