Run Lineage Diagnostics for Views (Beta)

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Available from version 2024.3.4

Note

The lineage diagnostics capability is only available on the Alation Cloud Service instances on the cloud-native architecture.

Lineage charts include a self-service diagnostic tool designed to help users understand why lineage for a view may be missing. When possible, the tool also attempts to rebuild the lineage for the view.

The tool is available to users with the Catalog Admin and Server Admin roles only.

Note

The availability of this tool is currently controlled by the alation_conf flag alation.feature_flags.DEV_enable_lineage_self_service, which is set to True by default. Setting the flag to False disables this feature.

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

Run Diagnostics

Alation automatically detects potential issues with lineage when the lineage chart for a view object cannot be displayed. Catalog and Server Admins will see the Run Diagnosis button in the chart area on the catalog page of the view object.

../../_images/Lineage_RunDiagnosis_Button.png

To check for issues:

  1. Click Run Diagnosis. The tool will start running diagnostic steps to identify potential issues and display a status message like below.

    ../../_images/Lineage_RunDiagnosis_Progress.png

  2. If no issues are found, the lineage generation job starts automatically, and you’ll see the message You should be able to see lineage in a few hours. The message includes a job ID, which you should save in case you need to contact Support later.

    ../../_images/Lineage_RunDiagnosis_Success.png

  3. If an issue is found, the system identifies the stage where the problem occurred and provides a job ID. You’ll be prompted to create an Alation Support case for further investigation.

    ../../_images/Lineage_RunDiagnosis_ParsingIssue.png

Limitations

  • The tool only supports views. It doesn’t diagnose missing lineage for other object types.

  • Only table-level lineage is generated.

  • Databricks Unity Catalog OCF connector is not supported, as lineage for Databricks Unity Catalog sources is generated through direct lineage extraction.

Additional Lineage Reprocessing Capabilities

Users with the Data Source Admin level of access to the data source can Reprocess Lineage for Views in this data source from the data source Settings page.