Does your organization have data intelligence? Can people easily find, understand, and trust data? If not, you'll want to join this lab to learn how Alation ensures people have reliable and trustworthy data to make confident, data-driven decisions.
In this expert-led, hands-on lab, you will follow a step-by-step guide utilizing an Alation-provided sample database of a fictitious TV streaming company, Juno. Using this example data, you will learn how the Alation Data Catalog improves productivity with self-service analytics and uses automation and continuous improvement to manage data governance. See why Alation is Snowflake's 2-time Data Governance Partner of the Year.
During the lab, you'll kickstart your 14-day free trial of Alation — to which you can connect to your own Snowflake environment and continue to explore the data catalog.
Get Started
Submit
1. Access Partner Connect from your Snowflake trial account.
Admin
menu selection from the left navigation bar.Partner Connect
2. Default Objects Created in your Snowflake trial account.
Connect
3. Your Partner Connect Account has been Created
Activate
4. Alation Account set up
Start Free Trial
5. Getting Started User Information
Next
6. Your Account is Ready
Log in to Alation Account
In this Alation data intelligence lab, you can expect to see how the platform helps to solve problems for roles ranging from business analysts to data engineers. Each section will have discussion points along with exercises to help reinforce each topic.
Let's get started!
1. Log into Alation website.
Access the URL provided for your Alation trial in your preferred browser, like Chrome.
2. On the home page scroll down to the bottom and click on Data Governance and Discovery VHOL.
3. The Data Governance and Discovery Virtual Hands on Lab.
This is the main page that has the five chapters that will be covered in the lab. Each chapter covers a particular topic.
Let's get started with Chapter 01. Establishing a Governance Framework. Please click on the highlighted chapter link.
Overview
One of the best parts of using the Alation data intelligence platform is that you get a system to drive data culture and a wealth of knowledge on how to get started. Data Governance doesn't need to be a daunting undertaking. Let Alation help guide you using an active data governance methodology based on people first.
This section is all about how to get started and achieve value quickly from Alation—starting with curating assets to understanding common problems that most data organizations want to solve. Some challenges impact a particular role in an organization, and you will see how all roles benefit from the data intelligence platform solutions.
Note that we will be accessing an Alation-provided Snowflake account for this lab. At the conclusion of the lab, we'll discuss how to set up Alation to manage your own Snowflake data sources.
To continue to the next section, click on the link in the highlighted box at the bottom of the page.
Overview
In today's world of data management, it is common to have policies and procedures that range from data quality and retention to personal data protection. If you are an organization that has policies defined, how difficult is it to find them? Often, policies are in file shares or document systems, making them very hard to discover. With Alation, you can store your policies where your data assets live, which makes them extremely easy to find. The other huge benefit is that data assets associated with the policy can be tracked.
Exercise Guidance |
Benefits |
Policies as living content centralized with data asset information helps everyone in the organization.
Now it is time to move on to Search and Discovery!
Overview
Every organization wants to make data-driven decisions. For this to become a reality, all employees must have the ability to quickly search data assets (databases, files, reports, etc.) to discover trusted data they can understand and use.
Alation creates an experience that allows users to expand their world of knowledge through curation and collaboration. A community of technical and non-technical producers and consumers helps drive data literacy, leading to better business decisions and success.
Exercise Guidance |
Benefits |
Search is core to increasing productivity and data literacy. Spend minutes instead of days finding the data that you need.
Now it is time to move on to Compose, Alation's SQL editor!
Overview
In addition to the rich cataloging and governance capabilities, Alation enables users to interact with data stored in cataloged sources. This capability is called Compose and provides a fully integrated and governed SQL development environment.
Compose is more than your typical SQL editor. Because it is integrated with the catalog, the editor's IntelliSense can provide suggestions as you type for tables, columns, joins, etc. Another advantage is that active governance will show you when an item is deprecated, so you are not using bad data.
Queries can be developed by those who know SQL and shared with others in the organization. No worries if you don't know how to read or write SQL. Queries can be published as forms that allow the business user to fill out some prompts and get answers to the questions they need to be answered.
Exercise Guidance |
Queries and Compose are accessible from several places in the application. The following shows how you can navigate to them.
Benefits |
Compose helps spread data literacy in the organization by allowing users to build and share queries that help answer business questions.
Now it is time to wrap this up; let's finish with a quick summary!
You did it! In this short period, you have seen how Alation:
To get the most out Alation during your trial.
Last but not least, please check your email for continued guidance and tips throughout your trial.
Thanks again for your interest in Alation; we are here for you!