Alation

For data and analytics. Alation is our data catalogue tool used primarily to collaborate and index data. Alation is being used by the team to share and transfer knowledge, search for and understand data, and overall to improve the analyst experience and way of work.

We use Alation for visibility into the tables, views, and dashboards across our data platforms, adding metadata to help users find the best data for their needs. We also use the Business Glossary capability to provide a centralized, searchable place that promotes a common business language. It includes definitions, business rules, some concept diagrams, and links to additional context. And we use articles to provide additional context, best practices, and links to training.

Our Data Catalog team has used Alation Data Catalog to create technical and business metadata for Snowflake data. Essentially, we are creating a repository of data sets used in our organization. We have now completed the initial round of metadata curation, and it is time to roll out the data catalog to the entire Account Processing business unit. In addition to rolling out one business unit, there is a high chance that the use of Alations Data Catalog becomes multi-business functional with hopes of going enterprise wide in the near future.

Our leadership once said "Uncataloged data is useless to us." We use Alation to catalog our data, track lineage, and explain our business.

We use Alation to house our business glossaries and as a map of our data sources on prem. The use of Alation is helping our different departments use terms and metrics in a consistent manner. Alation also in invaluable as a resource to our analysts on finding out the where and what of our data elements.

We use Alation to support our decentralised data architecture. It acts as our discovery layer for users to find the information and/or data source for their use case

We're at the tail end of our right-start implementation. The objective is creating a single source of information for consumers of data as well as discovery and consolidation of assets that live in silos within the organisation. Our practice is at an early stage so will be related to a data maturity / governance programme that is about to start.

Comparison of business problem to Alation value add:
* People say different words but mean the same thing > Centralized Business Glossary for reference translation
* I dont know what data exists > Automated metadata extraction provides real time look at what data assets are out there
* I dont know what the nuances/meaning of data is > Curation of Data dictionary allows data teams to add definitions, calculations and more
* I dont know who the owners of a report are to request a change or get more context > Alation allows you to document and assign ownership for data assets
* I dont know what Data Assets are classified as sensitive data or subject to applicable to legal regulations > Alation allows for cataloging of data assets using rule sets, for ease of classification

We use it as a single source of truth for our organization to find and understand data. The core use case that the tool is solving for is that single source of truth, we don't currently have a central repository for all of our different server types. Our scope is Enterprise wide.

Documentation is often sparse for data in any organization. We use Alation as a central repository for metadata curation and documentation, and also as a central communication hub for our data.

Making metadata on the presentation layer datasets available to the business users, analysts and stakeholders.

Alation is a tool that allows you to very easily get familiar what data is available in your database through a machine learning-based catalogue and documentation. The ability to see easily click through different tables and columns is something I have not been able to do in any another database tools so far. Additionally, the query editor and ability to easily safe and share queries with your peers is a please to work with as well.

1.Collects metadata and its description in one place. Keeping metadata up-to-date due to automatic regular metadata extraction.
2.Provides easy access to metadata within one tool with no necessity to request specific accesses to separate data sources.
It hepls analysts and other team members to find data which suits them best to solve their business cases (create/improve product, create reports etc).
3.Represents information about stewards, owners and other responsible people/teams around each data source.
4.Gives an oppurtunity to write articles/terms on different topics and link them with actual technical metadata.

I am using Alation to aid in our data governance efforts. It ties all the metadata together beautifully and helps give deeper insights into the data stories we are telling and how they are built. I have plans to use it for a best practices and policies repository as well where employees across the organization can write articles and how to manuals and make them available to everyone.

Alation Data Catalog is used as a data analytics tool within the part of the organization that I reside in. It serves as a database for all of our data, including third party data, where we can run queries that are then used in Tableau dashboards, Microsoft Excel pulls and other data analytic tools. This data analyses is then used to build presentations for the VPs and above.

We use Alation as a data discovery tool at our company. It's highly used as a query running tool as well. It's been used across EDW systems and helps in identifying the metadata about data. It is ensuring a single source of truth and you can find all the information in one place.