Unmatched Data Lineage Visualization for Seamless Insights
What do you like best about the product?
Alation's strongest feature is its ability to automatically map and visualize the full journey of data from source to report, including transformations at the column level, often via Query Log Ingestion. I like this the most.
What do you dislike about the product?
Complexity and Investment Required: The platform's powerful features come with a high degree of initial configuration and ongoing administrative overhead.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Reduced Development & Debugging Time: When a source system changes, Alation's column-level lineage shows exactly which downstream reports, dashboards, or other data pipelines will be impacted. This eliminates the need for manual, time-consuming, or waiting for a downstream user to complain before realizing something broke.
Reliable for day to day data work
What do you like best about the product?
What I like most about Alation is that it reduces the amount of time I spend searching for data. Before using it, I often had to rely on multiple people or old documentation to figure out where something lived. Now I can usually find the table, definition or owner through a quick search.
What do you dislike about the product?
The main issue I run into with Alation is that some parts of the interface can feel slow especially when navigating between sections or loading larger assets. It’s not unusable but there are moments where it takes longer than I’d expect for a tool that’s meant to speed up data work.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Alation has helped reduce the amount of time I spend trying to figure out where data comes from and who is responsible for it. Before using it a lot of my work involved asking around or checking multiple systems just to confirm simple details. Now most of that information is in one place.
Increases data discoverability and boosts self-service analytics through enriched metadata and intuitive search
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Alation Data Catalog is data discoverability and metadata management.
In my day-to-day work, I use Alation Data Catalog for data discoverability and metadata management by ingesting metadata from a number of different data platforms, including Snowflake and Power BI. We use the lineage features to keep track of where the data is moving within our environment. We also maintain certain items related to our data assets, including sensitivity tags and data descriptions, which makes it easier for our self-service analytics users to find the data they need.
What is most valuable?
The best features that Alation Data Catalog offers are its search capabilities and the fact that it works with many different data platforms; it is essentially platform agnostic. The other piece that I really think is important is how easy it is to use as well as to manage.
What makes the search capabilities of Alation Data Catalog stand out for me is the fact that every item within the catalog is indexed and searchable, as well as the filtering features that allow you to narrow down to just the types of assets that you need. Wildcard searches are also very helpful. It is a very intuitive tool, as long as you are using the filters.
Alation Data Catalog has positively impacted my organization by allowing users to answer questions that they had without trying to track down an expert. This has saved them quite a bit of time and frustration. It has allowed them to solve problems they probably would not have been able to solve had they not had the catalog.
We have been measuring the curation of content within the catalog that has gone up over time, and we have also seen the number of users in the catalog increase, as well as the amount of activity within the catalog increase. We were seeing about an average of about 20% increase month over month for the last few months.
What needs improvement?
Alation Data Catalog can be improved by enhancing their lineage capabilities to make it easier for us as users to search the lineage without having to use the Alation Data Catalog user interface. If they could put it in a relational format, then we could join that information with other metadata from other platforms. We could join it in reporting. Lineage improvement would be the biggest thing.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Alation Data Catalog for eight years.
How was the initial setup?
I choose a nine for my rating because it has been extremely easy to use and extremely easy to set up. It allows us to automate our curation. It allows us to integrate with metadata from other platforms, such as Power BI and Snowflake. It gives us a much better overall view of our data environment. The search capabilities are extremely useful. It is easy for a user to come in and find what they need without having to learn a very complicated tool.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Alation Data Catalog is to give a very close look at the capabilities and make sure that they suit what your organization needs. If you are looking for better data discoverability, Alation Data Catalog is basically your best choice. Consider which connectors that you want to purchase, since those are licensed separately. Make sure that you purchase only what you need as far as that goes. Consider trying to integrate Alation Data Catalog information with other platforms as well to allow you to improve upon reporting. That worked successfully for us. I give Alation Data Catalog a rating of nine.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Powerful Data Interpretation with Impressive Algorithms
What do you like best about the product?
I like the alation algorithm & ability to create sharp data interptretation output.
What do you dislike about the product?
I found alation package cost is slightly high.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It saving time in drug discovery process and helping to solve data analysis problems of clinical patient data.
Experience of working on Alation
What do you like best about the product?
What I appreciate most about Alation is its intuitive interface combined with robust data cataloging features. Navigating and managing data throughout the organization becomes straightforward, making it much easier to locate, comprehend, and oversee information. Additionally, the collaboration tools and search capabilities stand out, significantly enhancing both data accessibility and trust within the team.
What do you dislike about the product?
While Alation serves as a robust data catalog platform, I have noticed that it can occasionally become sluggish when working with particularly large datasets. Furthermore, the user interface might benefit from being more intuitive in some sections, especially for newcomers who may not be well-versed in data governance concepts.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It is making search for data easier which saves time and also I can use natural language for query. It also helps breaking down data silos
Excellent for Data Insights and Organizational Clarity
What do you like best about the product?
Great job on on helping our organization understand their data assets
What do you dislike about the product?
Price can get expensive based on our daily log
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Alls us to find areas we can grow as a company
Developer
What do you like best about the product?
Able to design APIS and workflow automation
What do you dislike about the product?
Not lending or payments module. It is only an agent builder
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Building api's from scratch and layout codes
Insightful Analytics with Excellent Data Quality Scores
What do you like best about the product?
I love the insights it provides particularly the data quality score
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes the platform can be a little slow
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Saves me time when analysing date and instead does it for me
Effortless Data Discovery and Trust for Enterprises
What do you like best about the product?
it is an enterprise data catalog and governance platform so it's easier to find, understand and trust the data.
What do you dislike about the product?
There is no as such dislike about the platform sometimes latency feel you boredom.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It allows me to understand the key requirement and tells me to do data manipulation accordingly.
Exceptionally Easy to Use and Intuitive
What do you like best about the product?
This product is extremely easy to use and proves to be very useful. I would highly recommend it to others.
What do you dislike about the product?
No, everything is good and it's very easy to use.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I found this very helpful in resolving my issue, and it is also extremely easy to use.
