Alation widens scope for data connector technology

Data intelligence company Alation has launched a partner programme for its Open Connector Framework technology – the aim is to deliver connectivity to new data sources. 

The new work with partners is hoped to expand connectivity options using the Alation Open Connector Framework, an SDK to simplify the development of Alation connectors. 

Central to the framework are two engineering tenants: the separation of responsibility and creation of a runtime environment that executes integrations more efficiently.

Alation has pre-built connectors for a wide variety of data sources – Alation’s Open Connector SDK enables users to develop a connector for both commonly and less commonly used data sources.  The SDK provides an interface to support metadata extraction patterns for a variety of different data sources and tooling that simplifies development, deployment, validation and feedback. 

The company today provides connectors to more than 80 data sources, including Snowflake, Databricks, AWS and Tableau. 

This work joins its Open Data Quality Initiative launched in 2022.

As the modern data stack grows in complexity and organisations deploy an increasing array of disparate data sources, enhancing visibility across the data stack is critical to improve data trust.

By simplifying the management of data connectors, Alation claims that its Open Connector Framework can handle the scale of metadata generated by modern applications without exposing complexity to data-developer users. This means that developers can quickly integrate new data sources into the data catalogue, pulling in valuable metadata for wider consumption.

“Our goal is to make Alation the most open and extensible data catalogue on the market,” said Raj Gossain, chief product officer, Alation. He further notes that certified partners here can build connectors to populate more metadata from the complex ecosystem into Alation Data Catalog.

They receive integration materials that provide guidance on how to best integrate and create connectors. 

The hope is that data-developer users will be able to extend visibility to a greater number of customer-specific BI platforms, databases, data transformation, pipeline tools, cloud apps and a more holistic view of their data.