Release Notes 2025.3 (General Availability)

Note

The release notes on this page reflect changes to the “Core” component (Backend) of the Alation application.

RELEASE 2025.3.2

build 21.2.0.117326

Released November 3, 2025

Note

This release is available for all Alation instance types: customer-managed (on-premise) and Alation Cloud Service.

In this release:

Alation Data Quality

Alation Cloud Service

Monitor Setup Workflow Improvement

The monitor setup workflow now includes enhanced anomaly detection and data profiling capabilities.

  • Anomaly Detection Metrics: You can add anomaly detection at the table and column levels. For time-series visualizations and heat maps, the system uses a 30-day warm-up period to establish the baseline.

    • Table-level Metrics: Row Count, Freshness, Schema Drift

    • Column-level Metrics: Duplicate Count, Missing Count, Maximum, Minimum, Average, Standard Deviation

  • Data Profiling: Profile tables and columns during check configuration

    • Runs with each user’s credentials (prevents data leakage).

    • Honors Alation sensitivity tagging.

    • Reports distribution statistics, null percentages, uniqueness, and value ranges.

Create and Track Incidents for Anomalies and Failed Checks

Supports integration with Atlassian Jira for automatic ticket creation with contextual data quality information.

Failed Records Analysis

View failed records for deeper analysis that includes:

  • Active connection setup with user credential authentication

  • CSV download functionality for failed rows

  • Automatic query generation for supported check types

  • User-defined failed record queries for complex check types

  • Configurable record limits (up to 10,000 rows max)

  • Fine-tuning controls in Step 6 of monitor creation

Root Cause Analysis

LLM-powered correlation analysis on failed records with a privacy-preserving approach (complete data masking before LLM processing). (AL-200073)

Alation Analytics

Enhanced Document and Folder Usage Tracking

The Alation Analytics Dashboard has been updated to provide more comprehensive insights into your document objects. This update replaces the previous Articles in the dashboard and Articles column in the Top Contributors report. This release reflects the transition to Documents as the default documentation feature.

  • Document and Folder Usage: The dashboard now displays detailed usage information for your Documents and Folders.

  • Popular Documents: You can now directly track and analyze the most popular Documents within the dashboard.

Note

There is no impact on existing Articles data. Customers can continue to use Articles tables for reporting and analysis as before. (AL-173261)

Alation Analytics Curation Now Preserved During Updates

Alation Cloud Service

Custom titles and descriptions in Alation Analytics built-in data source are now preserved during data dictionary updates, preventing user-authored content from being overwritten during imports. (AL-199568)

Security

IP Access Management for Alation Cloud Service

Alation Cloud Service

Alation Server Admins can now configure IP-based rules to restrict access to their Alation Cloud Service instance, ensuring that only authorized IP addresses can access the Alation and its API endpoints.

The IP Access Management feature for Alation Cloud Service is now enabled by default, allowing administrators to secure access to their instance immediately without manual configuration.

The IP access management tile in Admin Settings is now automatically hidden for Alation Cloud Service instances with a dedicated access or private link enabled. This prevents confusion by ensuring that administrators only see relevant configuration options for their specific network setup.

For more information, see Manage Inbound Access to Alation Cloud Service (Beta). (AL-172660)

Support for Private CA Certificates in HashiCorp Vault Integration

Customer-Managed

Alation’s HashiCorp Vault integration has been enhanced to support environments using private root Certificate Authorities (CAs) for TLS, enabling secure communication with self-hosted Vault servers configured with self-signed certificates. This ensures compatibility for organizations with strict security requirements. (AL-203974)

Admin Settings

Updated User Role Comparison

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

The Compare User Role feature no longer references Connected Sheets. This update removes deprecated functionality, ensuring that all information in the comparison tool is current and accurate. (AL-203227)

Open Connector Framework

Improved Field Flattening for Power BI OCF Connector

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

The Power BI OCF connector now flattens complex fields more effectively, enhancing the discoverability and usability of your Power BI metadata within Alation. (AL-199531)

Updated AWS SDK for Enhanced Security and Performance

Alation Cloud Service

Updated the AWS Java SDK across all relevant connectors and modules to version 2.x, ensuring continued security, performance, and compatibility with AWS services. (AL-199039)

Open Connector Framework SDK Enhancements for Table Timestamps

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

The Open Connector Framework SDK now supports streaming additional table metadata, specifically updated timestamp fields, allowing connectors to provide richer historical context. (AL-201428)

Redshift Datashare Extraction Support

Alation Cloud Service

The Amazon Redshift OCF connector now supports the extraction of Redshift datashares, allowing you to catalog shared objects by enabling Extract Datashares. (AL-200432)

Improved Incremental Metadata Extraction for Deleted and Re-created Objects

Alation Cloud Service

Incremental Metadata Extraction (MDE) now correctly handles scenarios where objects are deleted and then re-created, ensuring that your catalog accurately reflects the current state of your data assets. (AL-196631)

Granular File Extraction Control for Amazon S3 OCF Connector

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

For the Amazon S3 OCF Connector, administrators can now control which specific S3 buckets have their file metadata extracted. This allows for selective cataloging of relevant files, preventing the ingestion of unnecessary data from buckets used for processes like ELT and improving overall performance. (AL-200536)

Enhanced Logging for Direct Lineage on RDBMS Sources

Alation Cloud Service

Introducing additional logging capabilities for Redshift datashares, enhancing the observability of Direct Lineage for RDBMS sources. This provides administrators with improved debugging and monitoring insights. (AL-200446)

Public APIs

Find a short summary of the Alation API changes below. More details are available in the 2025.3.2 API Release Notes on Alation’s Developer Portal.

Introducing Bulk APIs for Alation Data Quality

Alation Cloud Service

Introducing bulk APIs for Alation Data Quality, allowing developers to programmatically manage and integrate with Alation features at scale. (AL-200945)

Expanded Access to Custom Fields API for Viewers

The Custom Fields API now supports access for users other than Server and Catalog Admins, facilitating broader field discovery. Field-level permissions are strictly enforced for these users. (AL-205069)

Allow Updating Vault Configuration of Data Sources

The vault configuration (e.g. Keypair) of OCF Datasources can now be updated using PATCH (integration/v2/datasource/{datasource_id}/configuration/) API endpoint.

Note

To use this feature, set the feature flag alation.api.vault_config.enabled to true. (AL-198802)

Bug Fixes

Alation Analytics

  • Fixed an issue where, during Alation Analytics migrations, ownership of custom views was not correctly restored to their original owners if some views were owned by RDS system roles. This fix ensures that views owned by RDS system roles are excluded from the ownership transfer process and that the restoration script continues even if some individual view ownership transfers fail. (AL-206217)

  • Fixed an issue where internal database views were incorrectly cataloged in Alation Analytics for Cloud customers. These internal objects are now properly filtered out during metadata extraction. (Alation Cloud Service, AL-149405)

  • Resolved an issue where metadata uploads for object descriptions exceeding 4000 characters would fail, particularly when integrating with tools such as Tableau. Descriptions are now correctly handled to prevent API failures. (AL-205005)

  • Fixed an issue where the Alation Analytics ETL process would fail for the search_queries table after upgrading to version 2025.3.1. This was caused by a schema mismatch which has now been resolved, allowing the ETL job to complete successfully.

    Important

    Customer-managed (on-premise) environments require an additional step after updating to 2025.3.1.2 to reset the Alation Analytics ETL checkpoint for the search_queries table. Doing this immediately after the upgrade prevents a potential data gap. Follow the steps in this KB to complete the reset and verify the fix: Alation Analytics ETL Fails After Upgrading to 2025.3.1. (AL-206492)

Search

  • Fixed an issue where search queries with specific mixed-case terms, especially when targeting objects with underscores in their names, did not return accurate results. This improvement ensures search results are more comprehensive for such queries. (AL-205811)

  • Fixed an issue in the New User Experience where additional filters were not dynamically updated based on the selected object type, leading to irrelevant filter options. This ensures that only applicable filters are displayed. (AL-188412)

  • Fixed an issue where the Tagged with column was blank in search results for custom groups that had tags assigned. This fix ensures that associated tags are correctly displayed. A search index update or rebuild is required for this fix to take effect. (AL-204624)

  • Fixed an issue where exact title matches for BI Datasource column fields did not always appear at the top of search results. An additional configuration setting is now available to improve the ranking of exact matches over prefix matches in search queries. (AL-203103)

  • Fixed an issue where the Within column in the Advanced Search > Perform Bulk Actions section displayed an incorrect document hierarchy (breadcrumbs) compared to the catalog pages. This fix aligns the displayed breadcrumbs between these sections. A search index update is required for this fix to take effect. (AL-201766)

  • Fixed an issue where custom field filter values did not appear in search if the number of unique values for that custom field exceeded 10,000. (AL-198037)

  • Fixed an issue in the New User Experience where a custom field configured as a left-side filter did not appear as an available search filter. (AL-197421)

Content Experience

  • Fixed an issue in the New User Experience where long text in the Source Comments field was truncated instead of wrapping correctly. (AL-204841)

  • Fixed an issue where links to filesystem objects within the See more back-reference dialog box resulted in a ‘404 error’ in the New User Experience. (AL-203925)

  • Fixed an issue in the New User Experience where embedded documents in a side-by-side homepage layout had unbounded vertical height, requiring extensive scrolling to view content below them. (AL-202889)

  • Fixed an issue in the New User Experience where an ‘Overwrite Warning’ pop-up incorrectly appeared immediately when attempting to edit a rich text field with existing draft changes. (AL-201077)

  • Fixed an issue where tables embedded in Conversations in the New User Experience exhibited poor responsiveness and word breaking, especially on smaller screen resolutions. (AL-198848)

  • Fixed an issue in email notifications where HTML content in flag messages was displayed as raw code instead of being rendered as formatted text. (AL-181996)

  • Fixed an issue where moving a Folder to a different Document Hub failed with an error when the folder contained a deleted document that used a template. (AL-194821)

Security

  • Fixed an issue where Kubernetes pods were configured to automatically mount service account tokens by default, which could expose tokens unnecessarily. Service account tokens are now configured to be unmounted for pods that do not require access to the Kubernetes API server, enhancing security. (AL-191983)

  • Fixed a potential vulnerability affecting several Open Connector Framework (OCF) connectors, including Oracle, Tableau, Snowflake, Teradata, SQL Server, Power BI, Databricks Unity Catalog, and PostgreSQL. (AL-206896)

  • Fixed an issue where users were unexpectedly logged out of Alation or received 403 errors while actively creating and editing catalog pages. The idle timeout of the sidecar proxy was modified to be less than the idle timeout of the IAM service, preventing API 503 errors that caused these interruptions. (AL-204423)

Compose

  • Fixed an issue where pressing the Enter key in the query title field of the Compose Publish Query dialog box would sometimes unexpectedly publish a new query or fail to republish an existing query. Pressing Enter now moves the cursor to the description field, requiring an explicit click of the Publish or Republish button. (AL-190069)

  • Fixed an issue in Compose where the OK and Cancel buttons on the Publish Query dialog box could become inaccessible if the query description was excessively long. The dialog box now includes a scrollbar to ensure all content and buttons remain visible. (AL-190066)

  • Fixed an issue in the New User Experience where long queries were truncated and not fully visible in the query history modal. Longer SQL queries are now fully displayed. (Alation Cloud Service, AL-201957)

  • Fixed an issue in Compose that prevented users from re-ordering query tabs. (AL-181073)

Lineage

  • Fixed an issue where lineage creation for ELT connectors was delayed or not occurring. (AL-198324)

  • Fixed an issue where cross-system lineage between Azure Data Factory and Azure Blob was not generated, particularly when source paths and filenames were parameterized. (AL-198218)

  • Fixed an issue with lineage versioning that prevented older views from being removed. (AL-196218)

  • Fixed an issue with column-level Lineage for TEMP tables where columns were mapped incorrectly. (AL-181513)

Admin Settings

  • Fixed an issue where Catalog Admin users could not access table-level settings in the New User Experience, even when granular permission controls were enabled. (AL-205451)

Open Connector Framework

  • Fixed an issue where configuring remote Vault integration for the dbt Gen2 Open Connector Framework connector resulted in a “No connector could be resolved from the configuration parameter” error. (AL-204800)

  • Fixed an issue where some dbt ELT models and model columns were not displayed after Metadata Extraction if a dbt model had a large code definition. (AL-204285)

  • Fixed an issue where metadata extraction for Snowflake OCF sources encountered a SQL compilation error (“unexpected ‘AND’”) in the function definition query, particularly during full metadata extraction, with incremental metadata extraction enabled, and when no database was specified in the JDBC URI. (AL-204064)

Public APIs

  • Fixed an issue where the Context API failed with a 500 Internal Server Error when encountering unresolvable object set references, such as deleted objects or those filtered by permissions. The API now correctly handles these references without triggering an error. (AL-205055)

  • Fixed an issue where Virtual Datasource API uploads failed to work with schema names containing a period .. (AL-58298)

  • Fixed an issue where the Lineage API (integration/v2/lineage/) endpoint experienced a performance degradation. (AL-207501)

  • Fixed an issue where column deletion behavior was inconsistent across APIs, preventing columns deleted via the /integration/v1/column/ endpoint from being restored after metadata extraction (MDE). Columns, tables, and schemas can now be consistently deleted using the /integration/v2/asset/ endpoint. (AL-134333)

Other Fixes

  • Fixed an issue where the data quality SQL API’s inter-service request format was incorrect. This fix updates native data quality classification to support pass, fair, and fail categories. (AL-207811)

  • Fixed an issue where email notifications for data product feedback contained duplicate salutations. Emails now display a single salutation. (AL-203372)

  • Fixed an issue where the delete data source dialog incorrectly displayed only a single space in data source titles that contained multiple spaces, preventing successful deletion if the exact title was not manually entered. (AL-141949)

  • Fixed an issue where Data Products chat authentication did not work for data_product_ids longer than 24 characters. (AL-206108)

  • Fixed an issue where catalog objects extraction failed to run if there were no previous runs or if the previous run had failed. (AL-204595)

  • Fixed an issue where unified tags migration failed due to a unique key violation error caused by duplicate record insertion in the database. (AL-207800)

  • The date picker under Admin Settings > Logging in the Classic User Experience now correctly displays and allows selection of the current date. This resolves an issue where the calendar widget would incorrectly default to December 2012. (AL-199741)

  • Fixed an issue where adding Custom Fields of different types with the same name to a custom template caused the field to replicate and prevent reordering. (AL-197423)

  • Fixed an issue where custom picker validation was inconsistent, showing incorrect error messages when deleting unused options and failing to show errors for options still in use. (AL-202437)

  • Fixed an issue where Bulk Management uploads failed due to custom fields sharing the same name. To ensure unique identification, bulk management download files now include custom field names and their IDs in the header. This feature, controlled by a development feature flag alation.feature_flags.DEV_include_field_ids_in_bulk_management_file_headers, is enabled by default. (AL-201543)

  • Fixed an issue where Object Set custom fields could not be edited due to a legacy validation check incorrectly flagging soft-deleted objects as still in use. (AL-200838)

PATCH RELEASE 2025.3.1.2

build 21.1.2.117333

Released October 29, 2025

Note

This patch release is available for Alation Cloud Service instances and the customer-managed instances affected by these issues.

  • Fixed a performance issue with the lineage API (/integration/v2/lineage/) that caused response times on large databases to increase from under one second to over 11 seconds. This was caused by an unoptimized database query join, which has now been corrected. (AL-207501)

  • Fixed an issue where the Alation Analytics ETL process would fail for the search_queries table after upgrading to version 2025.3.1. This was caused by a schema mismatch which has now been resolved, allowing the ETL job to complete successfully.

    Important

    Customer-managed (on-premise) environments require an additional step after updating to 2025.3.1.2 to reset the Alation Analytics ETL checkpoint for the search_queries table. Doing this immediately after the upgrade prevents a potential data gap. Follow the steps in this KB to complete the reset and verify the fix: Alation Analytics ETL Fails After Upgrading to 2025.3.1. (AL-206492)

  • Fixed an issue in the Classic User Experience where icons in the lineage chart appeared distorted or broken. This was caused by a rendering change in recent browser versions (Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge 141+). (AL-206432)

PATCH RELEASE 2025.3.1.1

build 21.1.1.114820

Released October 10, 2025

Note

This patch release is available for Alation Cloud Service instances and the customers who reported this issue. It doesn’t apply to customer-managed (on-premise) deployments.

  • Added support for remote Vault integration for the dbt Gen2 and other Custom Asset-type connectors. You can store credentials in a remote Vault and reference them in the connector settings. Previously, configuring the remote Vault for the dbt Gen2 OCF connector returned the error No connector could be resolved from the configuration parameter. (AL-204800)

RELEASE 2025.3.1

build 21.1.0.113953

Released October 6, 2025

Note

This release is available for all Alation instance types: customer-managed (on-premise) and Alation Cloud Service.

In this release:

Sunset Notice for Alation Connected Sheets

Alation Cloud Service

As first announced in the 2025.1 release, Alation is discontinuing the Alation Connected Sheets feature. Beginning with the 2025.3.1 release, all references to Connected Sheets will be removed from the user interface. Existing Connected Sheets will stop functioning shortly after this release and will no longer update with live data. We recommend migrating any remaining workflows that rely on this feature to an alternative solution. (AL-198968)

Data Products

Data Products Builder Copilot General Availability

Alation Cloud Service

The Data Products Builder Copilot is an AI-powered agent designed to help you build trusted, reusable data products faster than ever. This new capability streamlines the entire data product lifecycle, from initial concept to publication in the Alation Data Products Marketplace.

The Data Products Builder Copilot:

  • Automates data product creation: Simply describe a business need, and the Copilot will suggest relevant data assets, automatically map business terms to technical tables, and generate descriptions.

  • Ensures built-in governance: The Copilot helps apply the Marketplace governance standards, ensuring that every data product is well-documented, compliant, and ready for consumption.

  • Accelerates time to value: By removing manual effort and bridging the communication gap between business and data teams, the Copilot significantly reduces the time it takes to deliver valuable data products for analytics and AI initiatives. For more information, see Data Products Builder Copilot page. (AL-198388)

Data Product Marketplace Permissions Now Fully Enforced

Alation Cloud Service

To enhance the security and governance of the Data Product Marketplace, the permissions system is now fully applied and enforced across all Data Products, as the feature flag to override them has been removed. This update ensures that all actions, such as viewing and managing data products, adhere strictly to the defined user and group permissions, providing robust and reliable access control. (AL-199933)

Alamigo General Availability

(Alation Cloud Service)

Alation’s new in-product guide, Alamigo, provides instant answers and intelligent support directly within the application. It is available to all Server, Catalog, and Source Admins. All responses are drawn from Alation’s curated knowledge sources, and all user interactions are securely encrypted. No customer data is used for AI training or generating answers.

With Alamigo, you can:

  • Get immediate solutions to common questions without leaving the product.

  • Resolve issues faster by avoiding context-switching across documentation or support channels.

  • Stay focused on critical tasks while Alamigo helps reduce interruptions.

Alamigo is enabled by default for all customers in the New User Experience using Alation Cloud Service (ACS) and who have upgraded to the release version 2025.3.1. To start a conversation, click on the chat icon in the bottom-right corner of your screen.

Note

You can disable (or re-enable) it from the Admin Settings > Feature Configuration > Enable Alamigo.

Limitations

  • Personalization and context retention: Alamigo does not yet personalize answers based on your account details or page context.

  • Coverage and accuracy: Alamigo is continuously evolving to improve accuracy and expand coverage of Alation’s official knowledge sources. (AL-199686)

Content Experience

Read-Only Mode for Articles Enabled by Default

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

Articles are now in a read-only mode by default. In this mode, users can no longer create new articles or edit the content (such as titles, descriptions, article bodies, custom fields, and attachments) of existing ones.

This change is intended to guide users toward Document Hubs as the primary solution for creating and managing documentation. Alation administrators can disable this read-only mode on the Articles catalog page if a specific need to create or edit articles remains.

Note

Deleting existing articles and changing article templates are still allowed to facilitate cleanup and migration efforts. (AL-202656)

Enhancements to Custom Asset Types

Alation Cloud Service

To improve stability when managing Custom Asset Types (available in Private Beta as of 2025.1.3), Alation now prevents concurrent editing of asset type definitions. This change ensures that multiple administrators cannot create or delete asset types at the same time, preventing potential conflicts and errors in the asset type configuration. (AL-202059)

Alation Analytics

Share Alation Analytics Data Directly to Your Snowflake Account

Alation Cloud Service

You can now directly share your Alation Analytics data with your Snowflake account. This new feature allows you to seamlessly integrate Alation’s rich metadata and analytics with your existing data in Snowflake, enabling deeper analysis and reporting. By configuring a new data share in your Snowflake account and connecting it to Alation, you can:

  • Directly access Alation Analytics data: Query Alation Analytics data from within your Snowflake environment without the need for manual exports or data pipelines.

  • Combine with your own data: Join Alation Analytics data with your own datasets in Snowflake to generate more comprehensive insights. (AL-199702)

Data Product Marketplace Tables in Alation Analytics

Alation Cloud Service

To enable deeper analysis of your Data Product Marketplace, four new tables have been added to the Alation Analytics database. These tables provide detailed information about your data products, their usage, and their lifecycle. The new tables are:

  • data_products

  • data_products_searches

  • data_products_events

  • data_products_listing_state

These tables allow you to build reports and dashboards for tracking key metrics such as data product adoption, popular search queries, and user engagement within the Marketplace. (AL-201367)

Change to Default Behavior for File System Object Ingestion

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

To improve performance and reduce database load, the Alation Analytics ETL process now skips the ingestion of file system (FS) objects, such as files and directories, by default. This change prevents potential performance issues for customers with a large number of file objects. Administrators for customers who rely on file system analytics must manually enable this feature to continue ingesting this data. This can be done by enabling the new Enable Alation Analytics File System jobs toggle on the Feature Configuration page in Admin Settings.

Note

When this feature is re-enabled, the ETL job will backfill historical data incrementally, processing up to six months of data with each run until it is fully synchronized. (AL-200805)

New Asset Type Summary Table in Alation Analytics

Alation Cloud Service

A new summary table asset_types for asset types has been added to the Alation Analytics database. This table provides a consolidated view of all asset types in your catalog, including custom asset types (available in Private Beta as of 2025.1.3) and other types like ELT sources. For each asset type, the table includes key metadata such as its display name, description, the number of assets of that type, and a list of its properties. This allows administrators to more easily report on and manage the structure of their catalog from a single, high-level view, eliminating the need to query numerous individual tables. (AL-199734)

New Column for Glossary Terms in Alation Analytics

Alation Cloud Service

The terms table in the Alation Analytics database now includes a new column term_state to indicate the state of a glossary term. This allows you to differentiate between different states of a term such as “draft” and “published” in your custom reports, providing better insight into your glossary curation process. (AL-196629)

Security

Enhanced Integration with HashiCorp Vault

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

We’ve significantly enhanced our integration with HashiCorp Vault to support key enterprise security and multi-tenancy features. You can now connect to HashiCorp Vault using namespaces and custom authentication mount paths for data sources, providing greater flexibility and security for managing your credentials.

These enhancements include:

  • Support for HashiCorp vault namespaces: You can now connect to and retrieve secrets from a specific namespace within your HashiCorp Vault Enterprise instance. A new vault namespace field is available in the configuration UI to specify the desired namespace path.

  • Support for custom authentication mount paths: For increased flexibility, you can now specify a custom authentication mount path when configuring AppRole or LDAP authentication methods for HashiCorp Vault. (AL-199206)

SailPoint Now a Supported SCIM Client

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

We’ve added support for SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) to include SailPoint as a certified identity provider. You can now integrate Alation with SailPoint using SCIM 2.0 SaaS connector to automate user provisioning, de-provisioning, and updates. This integration helps streamline user lifecycle management, improve security, and ensure that user access to Alation is synchronized with your organization’s identity governance platform. (AL-201387)

Platform

Upgrade Python 3.9 to 3.11

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

Upgraded internal Python runtime from version 3.9 to 3.11. This upgrade is necessary as Python 3.9 will reach its end-of-life (EOL) in October 2025 and will no longer receive security updates. This upgrade ensures that the Alation platform remains secure, performant, and compliant.

Note

This is a backend platform upgrade. No action is required from customers. (AL-188427)

Hard Deletion of RDBMS Data Sources Enabled by Default

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

The ability to permanently delete RDBMS data sources, including all their associated metadata and catalog objects, is now enabled by default. This feature, previously available in Beta, allows for the complete removal of a data source from the catalog without the need to first enable the corresponding feature flag.

Note

Contact Alation Support or your account team if hard delete is not the preferred setting. (AL-202929)

Ability to Integrate with Airflow as OpenLineage Provider

Alation Cloud Service

You can now integrate with OpenLineage providers, such as Airflow, to support the real-time ingestion of data lineage. This new capability allows lineage events to be pushed directly from your data stack into Alation as they occur. This ensures you have immediate and up-to-date visibility into your data’s journey, without relying on scheduled batch processes. (AL-187253)

Open Connector Framework

Lineage Configuration Now Enabled by Default for Relational Databases

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

The Lineage Settings tab is now enabled by default for all RDBMS data sources. This simplifies the process of configuring lineage extraction, as administrators no longer need to enable a feature flag to access these settings. (AL-203607)

Enhanced BI Field Discovery with Table Names

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

To make it easier to understand the origin of fields within your Business Intelligence (BI) sources, we have enhanced the Fields tab on BI Datasource pages. This enhancement improves the discoverability of BI fields and clarifies how they map back to their underlying data tables.

  • New Table column: Each field now displays its corresponding source table name, providing immediate context about where the data originates.

  • Enhanced local search: You can now search for fields by either the field name or its source table name in the Fields tab table, making it faster to locate specific data points.

This functionality is enabled by default and applies to the API and both New and Classic User Experiences. The feature is controlled via a feature flag alation.feature_flags.add_table_name_for_bi_ds_column. (AL-202256)

Note

Alation Cloud Service customers can request server configuration changes through Alation Support.

Granular File Extraction Control for Amazon S3 Connector

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

For the Amazon S3 OCF Connector, a new option is available for more granular control over metadata extraction. Within the selective extraction settings, you can now use a new toggle to enable or disable the extraction of file metadata for each individual bucket. This allows you to selectively catalog files from specific buckets while ignoring others, to avoid cataloging a large number of file assets, improving performance and ensuring only relevant assets are brought into Alation. (AL-202037)

dbt Model Descriptions Now Visible on RDBMS Pages

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

To provide richer context and bridge the gap between your transformation logic and your physical data, descriptions from dbt are now displayed directly on their corresponding RDBMS catalog pages. Previously, this valuable documentation from dbt models and columns was only visible on the dbt model asset page. When viewing a table or column that was generated by a dbt model, you will now see a dedicated section displaying the description from the dbt source on the RDBMS catalog pages. (AL-199539)

Public APIs

Find a short summary of the Alation API changes below. More details are available in the 2025.3.1 API Release Notes on Alation’s Developer Portal.

Aggregated Context API

Alation Cloud Service

We have upgraded the underlying Large Language Model (LLM) that powers several of Alation’s AI-driven features. This enhancement improves the accuracy and relevance of responses and suggestions provided across the platform. This upgrade is the new default in all cloud regions except for Canada. (AL-203437)

Get Lineage Information API

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

The Get Lineage API has been optimized to use a new backend model, improving performance while keeping the response format unchanged. Existing integrations continue to work as before. A new optional query parameter has been added for more flexibility: excludeChildren

  • Default: false returns lineage for the requested object and its children (for example, a table and its columns).

  • When set to true: returns lineage only for the requested object (for example, just the table) without child-level lineage.

This allows choosing between detailed lineage (including children) or a simpler parent-level view. (AL-201452)

Note

The new parameter is available when the following flags are enabled:

  • lineage-service.dataflow_migration.run_successfully

  • lineage-service.features.enable_new_get_lineage_public_api_impl

New Parameter to Exclude Deleted Object Reference

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

Added a new query parameter to exclude the deleted object references in the following API endpoints:

Table Name Support in BI Datasource Column API Endpoints

Alation Cloud Service, Customer Managed

The BI Datasource Column API endpoints have been enhanced to include the table_name attribute for BI datasource columns.

  • GET Requests: The GET Datasource Column endpoint now returns the table_name field in the response. The endpoint also supports a new query parameter for case-insensitive filtering by table_name.

  • POST Requests: The POST Datasource Column (create) endpoint now accepts the table_name field in the request body.

Note

This functionality is controlled by a feature flag (alation.feature_flags.add_table_name_for_bi_ds_column) which is enabled by default. (AL-202256)

Bug Fixes

Content Experience

  • Fixed an issue that caused duplicate entries in vertex tables with mismatched object types, particularly for files and directories. (AL-203440)

  • The ability to sort by the Description column in table and column lists has been disabled to address incorrect sorting behavior. (AL-201193)

  • Fixed a display issue where ampersands (&) in object titles were incorrectly shown as & in the Move dialog box. (AL-200788)

  • Corrected a Japanese mistranslation for the Created by field on Document and Folder catalog pages. (AL-199884)

  • When exporting a data dictionary, custom field IDs can now be included along with their names. This can be enabled with the feature flag alation.feature_flags.DEV_download_data_dictionary_v2_with_field_ids. (AL-197628)

  • Fixed an error that occurred when moving a Folder to a new Document Hub if the folder contained a deleted document that used a template. (AL-194821)

  • Fixed an issue in Custom Templates where the Expand group by default option was not available in the New User Experience. (AL-190255)

  • Fixed an issue in Alation Analytics where a deleted term’s ID would incorrectly remain in the glossary_link column after a linked Folder or Document was removed. (AL-150161)

  • Fixed an issue in the New User Experience where @mentions in a description were not displayed in table and column lists. (AL-198650)

Search

  • Fixed a bug that caused a ‘500’ error when using a search filter to bulk update stewards. (AL-200092)

  • Fixed an issue where columns from BI data sources would not appear in top search results even when searching for the exact title. An additional configuration setting is now available to control the weight of prefix matches in search queries. (AL-203103)

  • Fixed an issue where an incorrect glossary was shown in the Perform bulk action section of Advanced Search. A re-index (update_index) is required for the fix to take effect. (AL-201766)

  • Fixed an issue that caused search and other pages to fail intermittently. (AL-201501)

  • For RDBMS data sources, deleted columns will now be correctly removed from the search index when their parent table or schema is deleted. This change takes effect after running update_index or rebuild_index. (AL-201472)

  • Fixed an issue where search could return invalid results if a filter value had been previously soft-deleted. This fix requires a full re-index of the catalog (update_index) to take effect. (AL-199166)

  • Improved search to correctly handle keywords containing underscores (_), ensuring that search terms are properly tokenized to return more accurate results. (AL-198167)

  • Fixed an issue that could prevent glossary terms with very long, non-breaking character strings from appearing in search results. A full re-index (rebuild_index) is required for this fix to take effect. (AL-198081)

  • Fixed an issue where custom field filter values would not appear in search if the number of unique values exceeded 10,000. (AL-198037)

  • Fixed an issue in the New User Experience where a custom field configured as a left-side filter would not appear as a search filter. (AL-197421)

  • Fixed an issue in the Classic User Experience where the Clear button for Domain filters did not work when the Federated Catalog feature was enabled. (AL-195431)

Open Connector Framework

  • For Redshift sources, updated the default queries for tables and views to correctly extract the table type for external tables. (AL-202966)

  • Addressed an issue where incremental Metadata Extraction jobs for Snowflake could get stuck when cataloging a large number of records with performance data. (AL-199356)

  • The Run Profile option for columns is now available in the New User Experience. (AL-198987)

  • Fixed a display issue in the New User Experience where long source comments were not wrapping correctly. (AL-203899)

  • For Azure Power BI sources, added support for uploading certificates in the proxy settings to resolve “PKIX Path building failed” connection errors. (AL-200059)

  • Addressed an issue that caused intermittent 504 errors when loading the General Settings page for a data source. (AL-199647)

Lineage

  • Added a feature flag to configure the polling frequency for the lineage exploratory endpoint, preventing it from stopping after reaching the maximum number of attempts. (AL-202667)

  • Fixed a 500 error on the “View Upstream Audit” (Impact Analysis) page that was caused by the presence of inactive (deleted) objects. (AL-192752)

Alation Analytics

  • Fixed an issue that caused the Alation Analytics ETL job to hang when run around midnight. (AL-202287)

Curation

  • Fixed an issue with Curation Propagation where Endorsement and Warning flags were not removed if the user performing the removal was different from the user who created the original flag. The removal process now correctly references the original user’s ID, ensuring consistent behavior. (AL-199894)

  • Fixed an issue where unified source tag values with special formatting were not extracted correctly to Alation Analytics. Snowflake tag custom fields will now appear as comma-separated values. Customers needing to backfill historical data should contact Alation Support. (AL-195285)

  • Fixed an issue in email notifications where HTML content in flag messages was displayed as raw code instead of being rendered as formatted text. (AL-181996)

  • Corrected the alignment of the Save and Cancel buttons on the Customize Template page in the Classic User Experience. (AL-198381)

  • Fixed an issue where back-reference fields would not appear correctly when an associated document was added from a Catalog Set. (AL-195879)

  • Fixed an issue where an ampersand (&) was incorrectly removed from an object’s title if it was followed by a single character. (AL-201265)

  • Fixed an issue that could cause custom field values to be inadvertently updated when custom field options were being modified by multiple users simultaneously. (AL-201060)

Other Fixes

  • Addressed a timezone inconsistency in the Health Check System that caused false “missed task” alerts during Daylight Saving Time transitions. (AL-201936)

  • Fixed an issue in Compose where users could not save a copied connection without first making an edit. The Save button is now enabled by default. (AL-201426)

  • Fixed an issue where Compose queries would get stuck in a queued state and fail to launch after being deferred. (AL-200365)

  • Fixed an issue where the My Tasks inbox for reviewers would only display a maximum of 100 items. (AL-178191)

  • Fixed a potential issue where rapid, repetitive updates to the same field in the UI failed to save correctly. (AL-203791)

  • Fixed a permissions issue in the New User Experience where users could see endorsement flag buttons on objects they did not have permission to endorse. (AL-201606)

  • Added the ability to create and update descriptions for custom user groups via the UI. (AL-201161)

  • Fixed an issue on the Physical Metadata Changes page where selected filters were not retained in the URL, preventing sharing or bookmarking of specific views. (AL-201139)

  • Fixed an issue in the New User Experience where running a query form on an SSO-enabled data source incorrectly prompted for a password instead of redirecting to the SSO login page. (AL-199864)

  • Fixed an issue with the Excel Live Report feature where the Refresh All function was not working correctly due to a URL incompatibility. (AL-199772)

  • Fixed an issue where workflow email notifications incorrectly identified the workflow creator as the actor instead of the user who triggered the notification event. (AL-199476)

  • Fixed an issue where group profiles could appear as Untitled undefined on the Tags page and could not be removed. (AL-199353)

  • Introduced an optimized method for deleting custom fields to prevent timeouts on large datasets. This can be enabled with a feature flag alation.logical_metadata.custom_field.dev_optimized_delete_enabled parameter. (AL-198716)

  • Improved the handling of failed Compose queries to ensure that the original error message and timestamp are not overwritten by the subsequent health check job. (AL-198424)

  • Fixed an issue that prevented connections to the Alation Analytics database from the New User Experience. (AL-197286)

  • Fixed a pagination issue on the user profile page where navigating to the next page of published queries would incorrectly revert to the previous page. (AL-194016)

  • Fixed a UI issue in Compose where the OK and Cancel buttons on the Publish Query dialog box could become inaccessible if the query had a long description. (AL-188453)

  • Fixed an issue in Compose that prevented users from re-ordering query tabs. (AL-181073)

PATCH RELEASE 2025.3.0.1

build 21.0.1.111393

Released September 9, 2025

Note

This patch release is available for Alation Cloud Service instances on the cloud-native architecture. It doesn’t apply to customer-managed (on-premise) deployments.

  • Fixed an intermittent failure in services like Search and the “Recently Visited” page. The root cause was invalid data in the cache for certain catalog types (e.g., ELT). This patch introduces stricter data validation and error handling for the caching layer to prevent corrupted data from impacting critical features. (AL-201501)

RELEASE 2025.3

build 21.0.0.110347

Released September 3, 2025

Note

This release is available for all Alation instance types: customer-managed (on-premise) and Alation Cloud Service.

In this release:

Content Experience

Default Enablement of Document Hubs Feature Flags

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

The following feature flags are now enabled by default and are removed from the Admin Settings > Feature Configuration page.

  • Document Hubs 1: Setup (Previously “Glossary Terms Setup”)

  • Document Hubs 2: Show Glossary Hub (Previously “Glossary Terms GA”)

  • Document Hubs 3: Enable Hub Creation (Public Preview)

  • Document Hubs 4: Performance Improvement (Previously “Glossary Terms Performance Improvement”)

  • Document Hubs 5: Document Total Count (Previously “Glossary Terms Total Count”) (AL-176418)

On-Premises Customers

  • Previous settings are respected: If you previously enabled and then disabled Document Hubs, your explicit configuration choice will be honored and your experience remains unchanged.

  • New default behavior: For all other on-premises installations, Document Hubs will be enabled by default from this version.

Alation Cloud Service (ACS) Customers

  • Automatic enablement: We will enable these flags across all ACS tenants.

  • Need to override this setting? We understand some customers are in the process of migrating from Articles to Document Hubs and need more time. For those customers, work with your Customer Success Manager to defer this enablement. Note that while this might buy time, we are working towards phasing out the Articles stack.

Bulk Management of Documents in Document Hubs

Alation Cloud Service, New User Experience

Organizations manage a wide range of logical assets in Alation, such as glossaries, policies, reports, and data documentation. Much of this content originates from external tools like spreadsheets, document repositories in SharePoint, Confluence, or legacy systems. You can now create, update, and delete large volumes of documents and folders in Alation using CSV uploads. Bulk Management provides a scalable, in-catalog approach for managing documents at scale. (AL-192028)

Curation

Always Receive Data Dictionary and Search Results Download Emails

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

Enhanced global email notification settings to allow sending data dictionaries and search results download emails even when the global email notification is turned off. (AL-200785)

Support of Custom Table Templates in Data Dictionary

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

Added support for fetching the custom fields from the respective “targeted” custom table templates. (AL-192955)

Compose

JDBC URI Validation in Connection Settings

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

Added support for JDBC URI validation when adding a new connection or editing an existing connection under Connection Settings in Compose. (AL-195532)

Catalog

Enhanced Filtering on Catalog Pages

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

Improved performance on the ELT model and Jobs Run tables on the ELT project catalog page. The child object filtering is disabled by default and is handled using a feature flag in Alation, alation.feature_flags.DEV_enable_catalog_service_child_filtering. (AL-200460)

Note

Alation Cloud Service customers can request server configuration changes through Alation Support.

Enhancement to Custom Asset Types

Alation Cloud Service

The Custom Asset Type feature (available in Private Preview since 2025.1.3) now supports querying custom asset types as separate tables within Alation Analytics, modifying custom asset type definitions, as well as adding custom fields to any custom asset. (AL-201951)

Data Products

Alation Cloud Service

Enhancements to Data Product Email Contact

Enhanced email notifications for the Data Products App so that user interactions such as providing feedback, asking a question, reporting a problem, or liking or disliking a data product would trigger an email notification to the Data Product owner. (AL-200050)

Broader Regional Support for Suggested Descriptions and Context API Availability

Alation Cloud Service

Alation expands support for the Suggestion Descriptions and Context API to the Asia Pacific: Mumbai (ap-south-1) region. (AL-179987)

Platform

Amazon Corretto Upgrade to 11.0.28.x.x

Customer-Managed

The Amazon Corretto JDK used internally has been upgraded from version 11.0.27.x.x to 11.0.28.x.x to enhance application security. The JDK will be upgraded automatically during the Alation update to 2025.3. (AL-198598)

NGINX Upgrade to 1.29.x

Customer-Managed

The NGINX version used internally on the server has been upgraded from version 1.27.x to 1.29.x due to end-of-life of the version 1.27.x. The package will be upgraded automatically during the Alation update to 2025.3. (AL-201143)

Admin Settings

Optional PKCE for Select OAuth Clients

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

Enhanced Alation’s OAuth implementation to support integrations with third-party tools that do not support Proof Key for Code Exchange (PKCE). By default, PKCE remains required for all OAuth clients. (AL-199945)

Public APIs

Find a short summary of the Alation API changes below. More details are available in the 2025.3 API Release Notes on Alation’s Developer Portal.

Data Products API

Alation Cloud Service

Added new filters, role and action, to the Get All Data Products API endpoint to filter data products with a specific role assigned or action permitted.

  • data_product_role: Returns only those data products where the user has a role assigned.

  • data_product_action: Returns only those data products where the user has a permitted action. (AL-199895)

Aggregated Context API

Alation Cloud Service

  • Added support for rate limiting in the Aggregated Context API endpoint. A warning message is included in the response header when API usage exceeds 90% of the allocated free API calls. (AL-199488)

  • Added usage tracking and enforcement for the free tier limit of 2000 API calls. (AL-199487)

Relational Integration API

Alation Cloud Service, Customer-Managed

Added the following PATCH methods in the Relational Integration API for schemas, tables, and columns to allow updating of multiple schemas, tables, and columns, respectively, for a data source denoted by ds_id, along with their custom fields.

  • Patch Schema (AL-198869)

  • Patch Table (AL-198049)

  • Patch Column (AL-198868)

Bug Fixes

Alation Analytics

  • Fixed an issue where deleting custom fields in Alation Analytics dimensional tables failed if the field didn’t exist in the underlying Snowflake table, leading to errors in tenant environments with mismatched schemas between Postgres and Snowflake. The deletion logic now includes a fallback mechanism to skip non-existent fields and continue processing remaining deletions, preventing the process from getting stuck. (AL-199146)

  • Fixed an issue where the Alation Analytics ETL job failed due to null timestamps and timezone mismatches in asset types (Connected Sheets and DBT Connector). (AL-198082)

  • Fixed an issue where Top Contributors data was visible to the authenticated users despite disabling the feature flag alation.feature_flags.enable_analytics_v2_leaderboard. (AL-196523)

Catalog

  • Fixed an issue on BI source pages where BI source titles containing an ampersand (&) were incorrectly displayed as &amp. (AL-198011)

Compose

  • Fixed an issue where duplicating a Compose private connection did not carry over the URI or correctly pre-fill the name field. (AL-200971)

  • Fixed an issue where the scheduled query run history was not visible to editors who were not the query owners. (AL-194511)

Content Experience

  • Fixed an issue where restoring folders in the Classic User Experience triggered an error after deletion. (AL-198378)

  • Fixed a browser tab display where an extra “&amp:” appeared in the title. Document titles are now properly unescaped, so values like “&” are correctly displayed as “&” in the browser’s title bar. (AL-198829)

  • Fixed an issue where policy group buttons in homepage custom links did not route to the correct resource. (AL-195869)

  • Fixed an issue where uploading a dictionary triggered a 404 error when the Document Hubs 3: Enable Hub Creation flag was disabled. (AL-192650)

  • Fixed an issue where deleted term IDs continued to appear in the glossary_link column in Alation Analytics. The table now updates correctly when links are removed. (AL-150161)

Curation

  • Fixed an issue where notification emails were not sent when users or groups were granted query permissions. (AL-199637)

Search

  • Fixed an issue where domain filters could not be cleared in the Classic User Experience when Federated Catalog was enabled. (AL-195431)

  • Fixed an issue where search results did not return expected BI objects when custom fields were used as filters. (AL-194914)

  • Fixed an issue where soft-deleted catalog objects continued to appear as filter options in the left-hand filter bar. After executing an index update, these objects are now properly excluded from filter suggestions. (AL-200848)

  • Fixed an issue where search queries containing complex keywords with special characters such as dots or underscores were not returning relevant results. For example, a search term like “apple_pie” will now match phrases like “apple pie.” This fix improves support for literal matches and compound terms, but requires the following feature flags to be enabled:

    • alation.search.enable_integrated_and_with_combined_operator_fields

    • alation.search.enable_search_with_literals. (AL-194355)

Lineage

  • Fixed an issue where viewing upstream audit logs failed with a 500 error. Deleted objects are now filtered out correctly during impact analysis. (AL-192752)

  • Fixed an issue where bulk lineage uploads for file system directories failed due to incorrect path validation. (AL-189949)

  • Fixed an issue where the delete lineage script did not work with large volumes of data. The script now handles both migrated and non-migrated instances. (AL-189261)

  • Fixed an issue where SAP BO lineage parsing failed. The query parser logic has been corrected. (AL-184071)

  • Fixed an issue with column-level lineage for TEMP tables where the columns were getting mapped incorrectly. (AL-181513)

Open Connector Framework

  • Fixed an issue where the File System Catalog picker displayed raw FLAVOR_ICONS text instead of the correct icon when Unify Tags was enabled. (AL-200344)

  • Fixed an issue where custom field values (non-string types) did not appear in the History popup. Multipicker, date, and other types now display correctly. (AL-198730)

  • Fixed an issue where deleting an asset source failed to clear source instance and configuration data, causing upgrade issues. Deletion now fully removes all associated entries. (AL-198492)

  • Fixed an issue where BI source names were not properly encoded on the connector page. (AL-198011)

  • Fixed an issue in the SSRS OCF Connector where datasets and data sources with the same name caused missing metadata. The issue has been resolved using a new external ID format. For more information, see SSRS Connector Update: Resolving Missing Shared Data Sources Across Projects. (AL-136329)

  • Fixed an issue where Snowflake tag updates removed custom field options and values when the source-defined fields had no allowed values. (AL-191260)

Public APIs

  • Fixed an issue where the X-Next-Page header was missing from the Custom Field Value API endpoint. (AL-201033)

Other Fixes

  • Fixed an issue in workflows where the Under Review suggestion count included drafts from other users, leading to misleading counts. (AL-198274)

  • Fixed an issue where users encountered RST_STREAM errors when running QLI. Forward proxy tolerance has been increased. (AL-198153)

  • Fixed an issue where the conflict indicator showed 0 Conflicts in the Classic User Experience, leading to confusion. The indicator is now hidden when there are no actual conflicts. (AL-197581)

  • Fixed an issue where users couldn’t properly specify workflows for glossary objects when the document hub feature flags were partially enabled. (AL-196804)

  • Fixed an issue where the description field was missing for Sync Children for Tables in schema-level manual catalog sets in the New User Experience. (AL-196319)

  • Fixed an issue where the Tasks Inbox loaded slowly with over 600 tasks. Deleted or excluded objects are now properly filtered out. (AL-194955)

  • Fixed an issue where navigating to the next page in a user’s published queries list reverted back to the previous page. (AL-194016)

  • Fixed an issue where the number of queries shown on the table catalog page didn’t match the list due to duplicate rows from permission joins. (AL-193648)

  • Fixed an issue on the Customer Portal where upgradeable items were incorrectly shown for the Alation Cloud Service customers. (AL-137324)