Configure the SAS Base OCF Connector

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

The settings page of a connector is structured into categorized tabs. Refer to the corresponding sections for information on configuring each of the tabs:

Manage Access to the Data Source

You manage the catalog visibility of a data source on the Access tab of the settings. Refer to Configure Access to OCF Data Sources for information on how to configure the Access tab.

Configure the Data Source Connection

Configure the connection properties on the General Settings tab.

Application Settings

Specify Application Settings if applicable. Click Save to save the changes after providing the information.

Parameter

Description

BI Connection Info

This parameter is used to generate lineage between the current data source and another source in the catalog, for example a BI source that retrieves data from the underlying . database

The parameter accepts host and port information of the corresponding BI data source connection.

Use the following format: host:port

You can provide multiple values as a comma-separated list:

10.13.71.216:1541,sever.com:1542

Find more details in BI Connection Info

Enable Automatic Lineage Generation

The Enable Automatic Lineage Generation toggle is ON by default, which means Alation generates lineage automatically during metadata extraction (MDE). You only need to use the toggle if you want to disable automatic lineage generation or re-enable it later.

To disable or enable automatic lineage generation:

  1. Open your data source and go to Settings > General Settings.

  2. Use the Enable Automatic Lineage Generation toggle:

    • Off: lineage is not generated automatically. You can use manual methods or the API to create lineage.

    • On: lineage is generated automatically during MDE.

Connector Settings

Specify the data source connection information in the Data Source Connection section of the user interface and save the values by clicking Save.

Parameter

Description

JDBC URI

Specify the JDBC URI. For information on formats, see JDBC URI.

Username

Specify the service account username.

Password

Provide the service account password.

Logging Configuration

Select the logging level for the connector logs and save. The available log levels are based on the Log4j framework.

Parameter

Description

Log level

Select the log level to generate logs. The available options are INFO, DEBUG, WARN, TRACE, ERROR, FATAL, ALL.

Obfuscate Literals

Obfuscate Literals—Enable this toggle to hide the details of the queries in the catalog page that are ingested via QLI or executed in Compose. This toggle is disabled by default.

Test Connection

Under Test Connection, click Test to validate network connectivity.

Delete the Data Source

To delete the Data Source, refer Delete a Data Source.

Configure Metadata Extraction

You can configure metadata extraction (MDE) on the Metadata Extraction tab of the Settings page. Refer to Configure Metadata Extraction for OCF Data Sources for information about the available configuration options. For SAS Base data sources, Alation supports full and selective default MDE and custom query-based MDE.

The default queries that the connector uses to extract metadata can be found in Extraction Queries for SAS Base. You can customize these queries to adjust the extraction to your needs.

MDE Extraction from Compose

After users create tables or views in Compose, Alation incrementally extracts their metadata and adds it to the corresponding schemas in the catalog. A Data Source Admin does not need to rerun MDE to have these new objects represented in Alation.

  • For incremental MDE from Compose to succeed, the CREATE statements must use this format:

    CREATE TABLE "SCHEMA_NAME"."TABLE_NAME" ({column properties});

CREATE VIEW "SCHEMA_NAME"."VIEW_NAME" AS {view condition};

  • For lineage to be generated successfully for views, fully qualified name of tables must be used in the view SQL.

Configure Sampling and Profiling

Sampling and profiling is supported. For details, see Configure Sampling and Profiling for OCF Data Sources.

Configure Compose

For details about configuring the Compose tab of the Settings, refer to Configure Compose for OCF Data Sources.

Note

To connect to the SAS platform from Compose, users must include a valid custom library name and library path into the Compose URI in the following format: sasiom://<hostname_or_ip>:<port>?libref=<library_name>'/<library_path>'.

Troubleshooting

Refer to Troubleshoot OCF Connectors for information about logs.