Alation Data Catalog Reviews and Ratings

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Alation is used in our organization as a way to enable users to find trusted data. Like any other organization, many data objects can have similar names so a data catalog is needed to make metadata easy to curate and simple to find and understand. The scope of our use case is any consumable data...raw form direct from data sources, prepared reports and dashboards.

Likelihood to Recommend

Alation is well suited to helping a user find a column or even a query using a business term search. In this regard Alation is excellent because it's easy to not only associate these items with each other, but there are also many ways to link the column and/or query to that business term/concept.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Alation Data Catalog offers effective

cataloguing and surfacing/availability of various datasets for easy,

self-service access by Analysts and other key data & analytics roles across

the organization

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Alation is pretty easy to implement. We were able to do it ourselves with Alation's help, no 3rd party needed. We are currently migrating to Snowflake, and it has been helpful with prioritizing what gets migrated. It's great for searching for tables and views. I even use it when I'm trying to find fields in a large table. If I'm not sure if the field is called first_name, firstname, or fname, I can use Alation's table page, filter for fields with "name", and easily find it.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Our business units goal was to have a data catalog used as a repository for data and definitions that are widely used within our organization. Alation has been perfect for making this goal come to life.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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

Likelihood to Recommend

Alation has a very intuitive UI that is great for content authors (i.e., Stewards) to write documentation for their data. It is easy to browse through and search for your data. It's easy to keep in sync with your data sources so you're always working on the latest version.

I would not recommend it for tracking lineage as that feature is immature and difficult to use.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

A data catalog is a necessity for any business that has and uses data. Alation is a top competitor in the industry and has an consistently evolving roadmap. The only reason that I gave a 9 instead of a 10 is because I have not used any other catalog products to compare to Alation.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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

Likelihood to Recommend

Alation is perfect for managing data ownership and stewardship, acting as the 'front door' or 'window' to data, glossary terms, domain homepages. It is great for consumers to find out about the update schedule on their current data sources or ones they will potentially use in future.

I'm less inclined to use the 'direct connection' via Alation to data sources, mainly for decoupling dependencies for any production supporting applications with Alation (if Alation goes down, we don't want it to take the connection down). But it is a great tool for putting the producers and consumers in touch with each other to arrange the connection.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

At an early stage:

<ul><li>Discovery of data is great</li><li>Notations work well</li><li>Implementation support gives a lot of confidence to the user group</li></ul>However, support for legacy environments where SRSS and SSIS are used (a lot of public sector in NZ) could be stronger.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Comparison of business problem to Alation value add:

* People say different words but mean the same thing &gt; Centralized Business Glossary for reference translation

* I dont know what data exists &gt; Automated metadata extraction provides real time look at what data assets are out there

* I dont know what the nuances/meaning of data is &gt; 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 &gt; 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 &gt; Alation allows for cataloging of data assets using rule sets, for ease of classification

Likelihood to Recommend

More appropriate:

<ul><li>Startup governance programs</li><li>Less technical user base</li><li>High focus on curation abilities</li><li>vetting/approval workflows in business signoff</li><li>Non microsoft stack</li></ul>Less Appropriate:

<ul><li>Complex governance structure</li><li>Advanced user base</li><li>Heavy reliance on ACTION based workflows </li></ul>

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

We are still in the set up phase but the sheer ease-of-use has led to a pretty smooth implementation so far. We are receiving outstanding customer service from the Alation team and feel confident we will have a working, customized, robust implementation for our data. We would have like to see some data quality present inside the tool, we have had to find different solutions to help our teams with those checks.