In this section, we provide guides and references to use the Alation Sink connector.
Configure and schedule Alation Sink metadata using the yaml:
How to Run the Connector Externally
To run the Ingestion via the UI you'll need to use the OpenMetadata Ingestion Container, which comes shipped with custom Airflow plugins to handle the workflow deployment.
If, instead, you want to manage your workflows externally on your preferred orchestrator, you can check the following docs to run the Ingestion Framework anywhere.
Requirements
The connector uses POST requests to write the data into Alation. Hence, an user credentials or an access token with Source Admin or Catalog Admin or Server Admin permissions will be required.
Follow the link here to create the access token.
Data Mapping and Assumptions
Following entities are supported and will be mapped to the from OpenMetadata to the entities in Alation.
| Alation Entity | OpenMetadata Entity |
|---|---|
| Data Source (OCF) | Database |
| Schema | Schema |
| Table | Table |
| Columns | Columns |
Python Requirements
We have support for Python versions 3.8-3.11
To run the Alation Sink ingestion, you will need to install:
Metadata Ingestion
All connectors are defined as JSON Schemas. Here you can find the structure to create a connection to Alation Sink.
In order to create and run a Metadata Ingestion workflow, we will follow the steps to create a YAML configuration able to connect to the source, process the Entities if needed, and reach the OpenMetadata server.
The workflow is modeled around the following JSON Schema
1. Define the YAML Config
Source Configuration - Service Connection
hostPort: Host and port of the Alation service.
authType:
Following authentication types are supported:
- Basic Authentication: We'll use the user credentials to generate the access token required to authenticate Alation APIs.
- username: Username of the user.
- password: Password of the user.
- Access Token Authentication: The access token created using the steps mentioned here can directly be entered. We'll use that directly to authenticate the Alation APIs
- accessToken: Generated access token
projectName: Project name to create the refreshToken. Can be anything.
paginationLimit: Pagination limit used for Alation APIs pagination
datasourceLinks: Add a custom mapping between OpenMetadata databases and Alation DataSources. If this mapping is present the connector will only look for the datasource in Alation to create other entities inside it. It will not create the datasource in Alation and it'll need to be created beforehand.
The mapping needs to be of the format alation_datasource_id: openmetadata_database_fqn Here alation_datasource_id corresponds to the numerical id of the datasource in alation. And openmetadata_database_fqn corresponds to the fullyQualifiedName of the database in OpenMetadata.
Below is an example of the mapping:
Sink Configuration
To send the metadata to OpenMetadata, it needs to be specified as type: metadata-rest.
Workflow Configuration
The main property here is the openMetadataServerConfig, where you can define the host and security provider of your OpenMetadata installation.
Logger Level
You can specify the loggerLevel depending on your needs. If you are trying to troubleshoot an ingestion, running with DEBUG will give you far more traces for identifying issues.
JWT Token
JWT tokens will allow your clients to authenticate against the OpenMetadata server. To enable JWT Tokens, you will get more details here.
You can refer to the JWT Troubleshooting section link for any issues in your JWT configuration.
Store Service Connection
If set to true (default), we will store the sensitive information either encrypted via the Fernet Key in the database or externally, if you have configured any Secrets Manager.
If set to false, the service will be created, but the service connection information will only be used by the Ingestion Framework at runtime, and won't be sent to the OpenMetadata server.
Store Service Connection
If set to true (default), we will store the sensitive information either encrypted via the Fernet Key in the database or externally, if you have configured any Secrets Manager.
If set to false, the service will be created, but the service connection information will only be used by the Ingestion Framework at runtime, and won't be sent to the OpenMetadata server.
SSL Configuration
If you have added SSL to the OpenMetadata server, then you will need to handle the certificates when running the ingestion too. You can either set verifySSL to ignore, or have it as validate, which will require you to set the sslConfig.caCertificate with a local path where your ingestion runs that points to the server certificate file.
Find more information on how to troubleshoot SSL issues here.
2. Run with the CLI
First, we will need to save the YAML file. Afterward, and with all requirements installed, we can run:
Note that from connector to connector, this recipe will always be the same. By updating the YAML configuration, you will be able to extract metadata from different sources.