Overview

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

The connector for Azure Data Factory is available for download from the Connector Hub on the Alation Customer Portal. Follow instructions in this documentation to install or manage the connector.

Use this connector to catalog Azure Data Factory data source in Alation. This connector extracts Azure Data Factory objects such as data factory, pipeline, and activity that includes copy data, data flow, execute SSIS package, execute pipeline, and general activity from a resource group provided in the configuration page.

This connector can also extract pipeline parameters, but the current version only supports parameters of the following types: string, integer, float, and boolean.

The transformation used within a dataflow is also captured and are streamed as columns in Alation. Lineage is supported for table level.

You can search and find Azure Data Factory (ADF) objects, curate the corresponding catalog object pages, and understand the transformation of the data using Lineage diagrams. This connector supports both internal lineage (lineage between tables) and cross-system lineage (lineage between source and target table with scanned data sources tables in Alation).

Team

You may need the assistance of your database administrator to configure this data source.

  • Azure Data Factory administrator:

    • Creates a service account for Alation.

    • Registers an application with Microsoft Entra ID.

    • Read scope for the registered application.

    • Creates client secret and add files.

  • Alation server administrator:

    • Ensures that Alation Connector Manager is installed and running or installs it.

    • Install the connector.

    • Creates and configures the Azure Data Factory data source in the catalog.

    • Performs initial extraction and prepares the data source for Alation users.

Scope

The table below lists the features supported by the connector.

Lineage

Object Mapping