Enable Alation Sources

If you have integrated the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta® platform with Hive, you can integrate it with Alation to simplify finding datasets within Hive for import. The Alation integration supports the following methods:

1. Read directly from Alation through an Alation Navigator integrated into the Import Data page. 
2. Locate tables through Alation and then open them with the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform.

Alation is a data catalog service for Hive. For more information, see www.alation.com.

Limitations of Alation Integration

• You can import only tables from Alation. 
  • You cannot use queries or select columns for import into the platform.
• Hadoop security features such as secure impersonation and Kerberos are supported if both users in the integration are authenticated and impersonated.

Pre-requisites

• Alation version 4.10.0 or later

• Your enterprise environment must have a deployed instance of Hive to which the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform has already been integrated. See Configure for Hive.

• You must have credentials to access Alation. You can sign up through the Alation Catalog Navigator after the integration is complete.

  NOTE: Your Hive administrator and Alation administrator must ensure that your accounts have the appropriate permissions to search for and access datasets within these separate deployments.

• You must acquire the URL for the host of your Alation deployment.

Enable Alation Navigation Integration

Steps:

1. Login to the platform as an administrator.
2. From the menu, select Settings menu > Admin Settings.
3. Search for alation.
4. Update the values for the following properties accordingly:

    

   Property	Description
   alation.sdkPath	This value identifies the path on the Alation server to where their integration SDK is stored. Do not modify this value.
   alation.enabled	Set this value true to enable the integration.
   alation.catalogHost	Set this value to the URL of the web interface for the Alation deployment.

5. Save your changes. 

Testing Alation browsing integration

1. Restart services. See Start and Stop the Platform.
2. When the platform has restarted, login. 
3. Click Datasets. Then, click Import Data.
4. In the Import Data page, the Alation connection should appear in the left nav bar. Select it. 
5. Click Launch Alation Catalog.
6. If prompted, enter your Alation credentials. 
7. Navigate to select a Hive table. For more information, see https://alationhelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us.
8. Click Select.
9. The table is added to the Import Data page. 
10. Import as normal.

Try running a simple job. For more information, see Verify Operations.

If ad-hoc publishing to Hive has been enabled, you can export the generated results to Hive and then attempt to re-import through Alation.

Enable Open With Integration

Optionally, you can enable Alation users to open Hive tables from Alation in the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform. 

Steps:

1. Acquire an Alation API token. 

   1. Visit the following URL:
      
      

      http://<alation_host>/admin/misc

   2. Click Get API token.
   3. Copy the generated API token to the clipboard.

2. Paste the API token into the following cURL command and execute it:
   
   

   curl -X POST 'http://<alation_host>/integration/catalog_chooser/register_opener/' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Token: <token_key>" -d '{"endpoint":"http://<platform_host>:3005/import/data?uri=${dataSource.jdbcUri}&table=${qualifiedName}","endpoint_type":"NAVIGATE","name":"Trifacta","accept_object_types":["table"],"accept_data_source_types":["hive", "hive2"]}'

   
   where:
   
   

   Parameter	Description
   <alation_host>	Hostname of the Alation server
   <token_key>	The token value that was generated in Alation
   <platform_host>	Hostname of the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform
   <platform_port_num>	Port number of the Designer Cloud Powered by Trifacta platform

3. A successful execution of the above command logs the following JSON message: 
   
   

   {"id":1,"name":"Trifacta","endpoint":"http://<platform_host>:<platform_port_num>/import/data","accept_object_types":["table"],"accept_data_source_types":["hive",
   "hive2"]}

Testing open with integration

Steps:

1. Login to Alation. 
2. Search for or navigate to a database table. Click the Open With... button. From the drop-down, select Alteryx Inc.
3. The table appears as an imported dataset in the Imported Dataset page. 
4. You can import the dataset into a new or existing flow. 

For more information, see Import Data Page.