Seamlessly Enhances Data Discovery and Collaboration
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate the close connection between data, metadata, articles, and glossaries that Alation provides. This feature simplifies understanding and managing complex data relationships. I enjoy how Alation makes it easy to see query history related to the datasets I'm exploring, which enhances my data exploration experience. Additionally, I value the ability to save 'canned' queries, allowing me to connect with established and defended metrics effortlessly. The integration with our in-house hosted LLM to use plain language for finding existing, documented sources is another great asset. This feature enhances data accessibility and efficiency. I am also impressed with how seamlessly we migrated from our on-premise version to a cloud-hosted solution, ensuring no degradation in value for users and keeping advanced users well-informed during the transition. With such capabilities, I am highly likely to recommend Alation to a friend or colleague, rating it a perfect 10.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find it complicated when dealing with datasets that have the same column name across multiple tables. Although I can search by field and limit it by table, tag, or source, I can't consistently get the same results when I try to search 'data' within 'table' with 'tag' from only 'source'. This inconsistency in search results can be frustrating.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Alation for data discovery and documentation, facilitating contact with data professionals. It allows easy access to query history and saving essential queries, improving data management and collaboration.
Effortless Navigation, Comprehensive Data Governance
What do you like best about the product?
I love how easy Alation is to navigate, making it straightforward to find the information I need swiftly and efficiently. Its built-in Composer and Analytics tools are invaluable, offering robust support for complex tasks. I truly appreciate how Alation links assets together, enhancing the cohesiveness of our documentation efforts. When documenting a project, Alation enables seamless connections between primary documents and other relevant documentation hubs, including data extraction or ingestion requests. As a result, referencing and navigating through different project documents becomes highly intuitive and organized. Additionally, having a one-stop view area for projects allows me to gain insight into a project's high-level details and access all related documents via convenient links. The simplicity with which I can navigate project documents enhances productivity and reduces time spent searching for interconnected assets. Switching from Collibra to Alation has been a positive shift as Alation's user interface is notably less complex and more user-friendly, eliminating excess clicks that were previously required. The ease of Alation's initial setup was remarkable once I understood the essential elements like templates and document hubs, streamlining our transition and integration process.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are two minor aspects of Alation that I find could be improved. Firstly, when an asset is hidden by an admin, it would be beneficial to have a visual indicator in the sidebar to easily identify that the asset is hidden. Secondly, a feature allowing users to log in as a different user to see that user's view of Alation would be extremely useful.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Alation to facilitate data governance by acting as a data catalog and documentation hub, linking assets seamlessly to streamline project navigation and ensure easy access to related documents.
Exceptional Tool and Team, Expanding Our Data Governance
What do you like best about the product?
For my team, Alation is more than just a SaaS tool; it represents a partnership that extends our governance capabilities beyond the boundaries of our organization. We have been using Alation for several months, though we are still participating in the Right Start program. The interface offers flexibility, allowing us to tailor the experience for end users through data products and domain pages, as well as enhance catalog elements with rich text and image formatting. Alation fulfills its promise by efficiently scanning our data landscape, which helps keep our compute overhead costs low.
While the tool itself is top-tier, I would be remiss not to acknowledge the Alation team. From sales to onboarding and ongoing support, Alation invests in the relationship and genuinely listens to client concerns. Their team is a valued partner to our governance program.
What do you dislike about the product?
To be determined. The only complaint I can offer is the limited number of data products offered with non-enterprise licenses.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Alation supports our developing governance program by serving as a central hub for data enrichment, ownership, and discoverability. With Alation, our organization gains greater visibility into the data we produce thus improving both discoverability and trust in our data. Consolidating our organizational knowledge in one place is especially significant for a company like ours, where turnover is low and many employees have been here for over twenty years. As a relatively new hire who is also unfamiliar with the industry, I have personally encountered the challenges that come from undocumented decisions about data, logic, and integrations. If implemented effectively, Alation has the potential to help us advance more quickly and operate with greater efficiency.
Empowers business users to independently access and understand data through a centralized glossary
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Alation Data Catalog is for data governance and for non-tech business users who especially want to understand some tech terms. For example, we have a huge data warehouse where every field in each database, in that particular table, in that particular schema, needs to be explained, and we try to streamline that technicality in a user-friendly non-technical way. That is where we use Alation Data Catalog to do the data governance and to provide information to non-technical business users.
Majorly, we do data governance and help business users, including non-tech business users, and this is the main use case for us.
My advice for others looking into using Alation Data Catalog is that it is a great tool, as it can help non-business users, has a robust business glossary, and aids in making faster, strategic decisions while improving productivity. I would highly advise others to use this tool as a data governance tool.
What is most valuable?
I appreciate the features in Alation Data Catalog, including data quality, faster data discovery, data stewardship, privacy choices, tracking data usage, collaboration, data governance, and open connected frameworks. Data stewardship is something I really use a lot, as it describes the activity associated with curating and governing data so that other users can find, understand, trust, or use it. A good data catalog should empower data leaders to identify data stewards based on the work already done, assign relevant assets to stewards, and clearly define responsibilities for them, fostering accountability and ensuring that the data is correctly handled throughout its lifecycle.
When it comes to data stewardship, Alation Data Catalog makes my job easier by providing a robust business glossary, which is another key tool for stewardship leadership to seek in a data catalog. It serves as a central repository that lays out a clear data-backed definition of terms, such as profit, with business metrics to ensure clear, consistent communication across departments. The stewardship capability I use majorly is a robust business glossary, which I wrote and managed.
Alation Data Catalog positively impacts my organization by improving data efficiency, data quality, and collaboration. My stakeholders can find relevant data assets quickly using a Google search without needing technical jargon, reducing the time spent searching for data. It has also increased productivity by streamlining data discovery and providing context, allowing analysts to spend more time on analysis instead of searching and preparing, so they can just start their analysis. Business users are empowered to access and understand data independently without relying on IT teams or developers for ad-hoc requests. For example, even my product owner does not usually go directly to the data engineer or developer with any doubt; she can search in Alation and understand the business glossary in a user-friendly manner. Additionally, when a new analyst or new member is onboarded, it helps them to understand things more quickly thanks to the centralized documentation in the catalog or business glossary.
What needs improvement?
Regarding improvements for Alation Data Catalog, I mention pain points, but I find it difficult to identify any. I do not have any pain points with Alation Data Catalog as of now; I could not think of anything that needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Alation Data Catalog for 1.5 years, and I closely work with the product owner who is the product owner of Pizza Hut Global, where we do some data governance and data steward work, which is where I use Alation Data Catalog.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In my experience, Alation Data Catalog is stable, as I have not encountered any downtime or reliability issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Alation Data Catalog handles growth and increased data volume well for my organization, as it has good scalability.
How are customer service and support?
I have not needed to contact customer support for Alation Data Catalog, so I have not faced any issues with customer support, and everything is sorted for our team.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution for data governance or cataloging before Alation Data Catalog.
What about the implementation team?
I think we are just consumers of the service from Alation and not in a business relationship as a partner or reseller.
What was our ROI?
I can share that when I joined, Alation Data Catalog helped me to understand things and reduce my time, cutting it by 50 percent. Instead of going into Google or consulting a colleague, I can just go to Alation Data Catalog, search there, and understand everything by myself. Thus, it reduced my time and saved my colleagues' time, so I can say at least 50 percent of my time is saved.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I do not have any insight on the pricing, setup cost, or licensing, as those matters are handled by the finance team, so I cannot comment much on it.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I am not certain of other Alation Data Catalog solutions since my company was already using it when we started.
What other advice do I have?
Alation Data Catalog is deployed in our organization on a cloud. We use both Azure and Google Cloud for Alation Data Catalog. Alation Data Catalog leads to faster decision making, as it helps in providing a single simplified view of data and clear definitions, allowing teams to find and use the right data more quickly, leading to better-informed and faster strategic decisions. I would say faster decision making is a key benefit. I would rate this review overall as a 10.
A Solid Product With Areas for Refinement
What do you like best about the product?
Alation is a strong and mature data catalog platform built around the idea of making data easier to discover, govern, and trust. Its biggest strengths are its user-friendly interface and its ability to bring business, technical, and governance users together in one place. Search works well, the catalog structure is intuitive, and built-in features like popularity ranking and behavioral analysis help users quickly find the right data. The right startnprogram that they offer was a great way to kick off the implementation of the product. We also have a wonderful Customer Engagement Manager. The admin team uses the site everyday to make updates that are scalable and the interface is extremely user friendly.
Where Alation really shines is in governance workflows. The stewardship framework, policy center, and data quality integrations provide organizations with a structured, repeatable way to manage data. For teams focused on compliance or consistency across domains, this can be a major advantage. Collaboration features—such as conversations, article creation, and steward assignments—help create a shared understanding of data assets.
What do you dislike about the product?
That said, Alation isn’t perfect. Some features feel rigid, especially when it comes to custom workflows or notifications. We often find the stewardship assignments, forms, and conversation-triggered emails to be more limited than expected. Integration with certain platforms (like Microsoft Fabric or customized semantic models) can require additional configuration. Performance and metadata freshness can vary depending on how ingestion jobs are set up and the size of the catalog.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Alation solves the challenges of finding, understanding, and governing data across the organization. By centralizing data assets, standardizing definitions, and enabling collaboration, it reduces time spent searching for information and increases confidence in the accuracy of data. The platform improves efficiency, promotes data literacy, and supports better, faster decision-making, making it a valuable tool for any data-driven team.
Empowers Data Governance with Actionable Lineage and Seamless Stewardship
What do you like best about the product?
Trust signals (certified, deprecated, warnings) that put governance right in the user’s flow.
Business glossary + policies tied to real objects, keeping definitions, owners, and rules in one place.
Lineage you can act on (table → column → BI asset) to see impact before you change a model or warehouse.
Stewardship workflows (owners, Q&A, flags) that make “who maintains this?” obvious.
What do you dislike about the product?
Lineage gaps. Cross-system lineage (e.g., Snowflake → dbt → Tableau) can be incomplete, and column-level lineage isn’t perfect for all connectors.
Freshness lag. Harvesters run on schedules; usage/lineage can be hours or days behind fast-moving warehouses.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
1) Finding the right data fast
Problem: Analysts can’t tell which table/view to use; lots of “where is X?” pings.
Alation: Google-like search ranked by real usage, with owners, certifications, and synonyms.
Benefit: Faster time-to-insight; fewer Slack/ServiceDesk tickets; quicker onboarding for new analysts.
2) Trust & governance in-flow
Problem: Unclear definitions and stale docs lead to inconsistent metrics.
Alation: Business glossary tied to physical objects, certifications/deprecation badges, policy notes.
Benefit: Consistent KPIs across teams; less rework; auditable definitions.
3) End-to-end lineage & impact analysis
Problem: Hard to see downstream blast radius of a schema change.
Alation: Table→column→BI lineage (Snowflake to Tableau), popularity, and usage context.
Benefit: Safer changes, faster RCA when dashboards break, fewer “mystery” dependencies.
4) Ownership & stewardship
Problem: “Who owns this dataset?” remains unanswered; content goes stale.
Alation: Clear owners/stewards, workflows for Q&A and curation, usage signals to prioritize.
Benefit: Better data product hygiene; accountable teams; retiring unused assets.
Elevates Data Confidence and Connectivity
What do you like best about the product?
I find Alation to be incredibly valuable for exploring our data catalogue and executing queries. With its central location, it facilitates easy data exploration and enhances trust in our data through the provision of high-quality metadata. I particularly appreciate the simple, context-rich search feature that allows me to find and understand data quickly. This enables me to delve deeper into our datasets and execute queries efficiently. The deep integration with various services like AWS Glue, AWS S3, and Zeppelin is another aspect I greatly enjoy, as it allows for seamless connectivity with other tools we use. Alation has been our primary data catalogue for five years, a testament to its reliability and effectiveness in meeting our needs. Overall, these features make Alation indispensable in my daily work, and I highly recommend it.
What do you dislike about the product?
I feel that Alation could benefit from enhanced AI features, such as a better understanding of data and the ability to prefill missing metadata. Additionally, during the initial setup, I encountered the need for reworking, particularly in renaming and ensuring that autogenerated titles were correct and contextually appropriate.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Alation as a central location to explore data, enhancing trust with high-quality metadata, enabling fast data discovery, understanding, and query execution.
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.
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
