Alation offers enterprise data intelligence solutions, including data search & discovery, data governance, data stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation. Alation operates in thethe data catalog market. With its Behavioral Analysis Engine, inbuilt collaboration capabilities, and open interfaces, Alation combines machine learning with human insight with the goal of tackle the most demanding challenges in data and metadata management.
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data.world
Score 8.0 out of 10
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data.world in Austin offers their metadata management solution, an enterprise data catalog, allowing users to create reusable, extensible data and analysis. Capture context and knowledge as teams work, so it’s easy to understand, check, and build on what they produce.
Alation's implementation seemed easier, and their team seemed more responsive and willing to work with our needs. The product and Alation as a company met more of our needs than the others.
Additionally GCP data catalog (not on the listed selection options)
Alation had a far more feature rich product, that connected well to our data architecture. None of the other tools at the time supported a connection to Kafka which is fundamental to our data processing.
Alation is well suited to helping a user find a column or even a query using a business term search. In this regard Alation is excellent because it's easy to not only associate these items with each other, but there are also many ways to link the column and/or query to that business term/concept
Ability to link objects using the @ symbol. It allows us to easily provide a way to get more information or context. So if the business concept is part of a hierarchy, we can link to the other terms in that hierarchy.
The customization is really helpful. Most object types have robust customization options. Others are less so, but it is improving. We've created multiple custom fields to support our data governance framework.
The search feature with filtering is helpful in narrowing down what you're looking for.
The lineage UI is not ready for primetime. I would not recommend this feature for my users at this time because it's too complex to understand and is visually difficult to track down specific paths.
The underlying infrastructure of the on-premise version of the software is fragile and unnecessarily complicated, using too many modules and technologies.
The license model of the on-premise version contains too many add-ons. I would like to pay one price and get all of the features.
Mostly because the search feature is case sensitive. This causes issues when users are searching for an industry standard acronym. These acronyms exist as attributes in thousands of places across our data ecosystem. Alation allows stewards to endorse attributes so that these endorsed items rise to the top of search results. The problem is no one types acronyms in caps in a search field. Alation returns results matching the case (lower-case) and in several instances the endorsed attributes don't even appear on the first page of results
It's a very user-friendly platform for those familiar with database concepts and SQL. Documentation is extensive but for those with no prior knowledge it can be daunting. The lack of ability to organize queries and datasets by category can also be frustrating and sometimes difficult to navigate.
From the RightStart Program to the Customer Success team to technical support, Alation has it all covered. They respond quickly and expertly to answer my questions and fix my problems.
Alation provided the right balance of connection with systems in use, trusted reputation and affordability. The product integrates with current ways of working and does not require reorganisation within other lines of business.
Provides a place where people can go to find things
When we first implemented, someone was concerned that people would now see what a mess our data environment was. I consider that a feature. We can't clean up if we can't see what we have.
