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Submission GuidelinesAlteryx Connect has option for bulk export and import to and from Excel, but doing so is a manual operation.
This idea is to provide Designer connectors that operate like the Connect bulk export and import.
This would allow Connect content to be reported and improved using automation.
The metaloaders provided with Connect do a fine job doing loading a generic extract from many sources.
This new feature would allow Connect customers to improve on that generic extract without making changes to the metaloaders.
Customer changes to metaloaders makes installing new releases expensive and risky.
Hello Alteryx Team,
Would you consider creating a metadata loader for SharePoint? A lot of companies that we are working with have a lot of data stored in SharePoint and they would like to catalog their metadata.
I am aware that it is possible to use the Files Loader when the SharePoint drive is mapped as a mapped drive in Windows Explorer, but the mapping and subsequent scheduling is very problematic, also because of security policies in large enterprises.
Having a SharePoint dedicated loader would be a great benefit.
Thank you very much for considering this idea.
Regards,
Jan Laznicka
We're working through an implementation of Connect - and it appears that every time Connect scans the Alteryx or Tableau environment, it does a full reload of all canvasses / workbooks.
However - we have several thousand tableau dashboards & alteryx canvasses - so this creates a significant delay on running the loaders, and we'd want to run these loaders every few hours so that Connect has up-to-date information (or at most 24 hours out of date). Running a full export and scan is causing this load to take a very long time to run.
Can we change the default behaviour for all the loaders to use a delta-load rather than doing a full scan - i.e. only pull out assets that have changed since the last load?
Hello Alteryx Team,
We would like to be scheduling the loaders from the administration console, Connections tab. However, when scheduling from there, the loaders are being sent to the Alteryx Gallery under low priority and therefore can easily end up in a queue. As we are scheduling a number of loaders that run for a significant amount of time, it is essential to have the schedules set on precise times and have a certainty that they will not end up in a queue. However, the low priority in the Gallery prevents us from doing that.
It would be great if there was a priority switch directly in the Connect's Connections section, where it would be possible to select how prioritized should the loaders be in the Alteryx Gallery. Also a possibility to select a specific worker would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you very much for considering this idea.
Regards,
Jan Laznicka
Hi Alteryx team,
would it be possible to include a project filter in the Tableau loader? Currently, the loader brings in all the projects from the selected sites. However, we have come across a situation when each department in a company has a couple of projects that they do not want to load.
The idea is that it would be possible to list the names of the projects that won't be loaded. It could be done in a way that all the projects containing the listed words won't be loaded. This would give us the possibility to, for example, not load the projects containing 'Ad hoc' in their names.
We are aware that we might keep these projects 'invisible' using permissions, however, for operational purposes we believe that the project filtering capability would be much better.
Thank you very much.
Regards,
Jan Laznicka
Establish lineage/relationship between SAP HANA and Tableau (reports)
Issue
By default in Connect, we are unable to see data lineage between SAP HANA and Tableau. The standard Alteryx loaders (i.e. Tableau & SAP HANA) in version 2019.2 are unable to detect the HANA object link due to a misaligned naming convention (“::” vs “/”). This specifically occurs when Tableau dashboards are pointed to HANA synonyms (“::”) as opposed to the views (“/”).
Background
In SAP Hana, there are two types of objects – views (which are present in relevant schemas, e.g. “_SYS_BIC”) and synonyms. The synonyms are created for each view by default and always appear to be in the schema “PUBLIC”, however, this is not actually an explicit schema. According to SAP, public synonyms are the official access interface for the system views.
When loading the objects from SAP HANA, the object names contain the package name as well as the object name (view etc.). These two are differentiated with a “/” when loaded from the “_SYS_BIC” schema (e.g. “GSTP_VALIDATION/CA_01_C_PDA_GRA_001”), however synonyms from the “PUBLIC” schema are loaded with a differentiator of “::” (e.g. “GSTP_VALIDATION::CA_01_C_PDA_GRA_001”). An example below, where first row is the view and the second row provides the related synonym:
Thus, the lineage is not established when the SAP HANA objects from schemas are loaded (containing the “/”, and at the same time, the Tableau dashboards linked to the synonyms (“::”). This is because the object names are quite clearly different, and the loader doesn’t currently resolve the synonym to view translation (as per standard SAP HANA SQL parsing behaviour).
Loading problem analysis (using standard Alteryx loaders)
On SAP HANA side, when running the loader, user can (optionally) define schema name(s) they wish to load, however:
The SAP HANA instance in question is very, very large and due to volume limitations, as well as the potential risk of performance degradation, it is not feasible to load everything.
When we’ve examined the H2 staging tables, we find that Connect has loaded (therefore is technically aware of) the synonyms from the “PUBLIC” schema but they are not ever loaded beyond the staging tables. This is obviously required if we wish to represent these relationships within Connect.
Idea/Fix:
Hi Alteryx team,
Would it be possible to implement an overview table with a complete history of metadata loads? I can imagine there could be a table in the administration console (in Jobs) where you could see the history and number of runs for each source system so that it can be referred to at any time when you need to know the frequency and past runs?
Thank you
Michal
Hi Alteryx team,
It would be great if it was possible to load SAP HANA systems using ODBC DSN instead of the normal host name.
From our experience, there is often more than 1 node present for SAP HANA systems and when entering the master node into the loader interface, we can't easily switch to a failover node when an unexpected event happens. Sometimes, it is not only the matter of nodes but for example a migration of an instance to cloud might result in a different host name. As a consequence, the loadcode is different and it is not possible to migrate the previous enrichment to the asset pages created under the new loadcode.
A solution for this would be the possibility of loading SAP HANA systems using the ODBC DSNs (this is already possible for example for Hive and it would be great if it was available for all applicable systems).
Thank you very much for considering this idea.
Regards,
Jan Laznicka
Hi Alteryx team,
Would it be possible to implement custom URL in the HDFS loader when using Knox Gateway? This could be implemented in the same way as in the normal Input Data tool.
When connecting to HDFS using the Input Data tool, the URL is automatically generated, however, it is possible to change it. Sometimes this is necessary as the 'sandbox' part of the URL is for some companies not applicable, they have for example their company names instead of it:
However, in the Alteryx Connect HDFS loader, this is not possible as there is no such field in the interface:
The 'sandbox' part of the URL is then automatically brought through 2 formula tools:
This makes it impossible to load the HDFS metadata into Connect using the out-of-the-box Alteryx loader. Implementing a field into the interface like in the standard input data tool would solve this problem.
Thank you very much for considering this idea.
Regards,
Jan Laznicka
Hello Alteryx,
The Alteryx loader does an excellent job capturing the Data Connection information from workflows and visualizing the data in Connect. It would be an additional benefit if the Data Connection information could get more granular and include the columns utilized from each table in the workflow.
An example where this will provide valuable benefits:
If you have a table with 100 columns and it's utilized extensively in more than 50 workflows, how do you analyze the impact when you're notified that column ABCXYZ is going to be altered? Connect can tell me which workflows are using the table, but it can't tell me which workflow is specifically using column ABCXYZ.
This would greatly aid users who may be searching workflows for specific column usage.
Thank you,
Jason
Hi,
In standard Alteryx Gallery loader (to Connect), would it be possible to implement an option of selecting the public workflows only and ignoring the ones stored in users' private studios?
Thanks
Michal
Hi,
Are you considering building a standard SAP BW loader for Alteryx Connect. I am concious there are some custom solutions available on the market (like DVW loader), but that is not standard and does not allow data lineage with other systems?
Thank you
Michal
Our Data Catalogue in Connect has about 2 millions items (tables, views, columns).
I see next issues:
All queries in this script containing column or table name as a parameter (e.g. src.TABLE_NAME='${query_table_name}' AND src.COLUMN_NAME='${query_column_name}') will be executed as many times as number of columns in Data Catalogue (millions times). It will work very slow because it executes a lot of queries.
Can you optimize somehow this process?
Version upgrade of metaloaders gets difficult when customers change or add tools to already complex metaloader workflows.
Please better support customer customization by placing macros in the metaloaders at critical points
These macros would do nothing except pass data in and out
with the intent that customers build these out as they need to improve the resulting data catalog.
Most customer modifications could fit within limits of what these macros could do.
It would be easier to upgrade version when most often it only required replacing entire macros that had been modified.
The improvement would be worth the nominal impact on performance.
Where performance is a problem, un-customized macros could be removed.
.
Currently, the Files Loader in Connect loads all files in a directory regardless of whether they are used in an asset (e.g Alteryx workflow, Tableau dashboard, etc). This becomes a problem when you have folders containing hundreds or even thousands of files that may not actually be linked in anyway to Alteryx or Tableau as those are all populated into Connect.
It would be beneficial if the Files loader was more selective about what files to load into the Connect UI by picking up file relationships discovered using the Alteryx and Tableau loaders for example.
PowerBI Report Server is now offered as an on-prem solution. It would be great if there was a loader available to capture PowerBI reports not in Azure. If this could also capture SSRS reports which also reside on the PowerBI Report Server this would also be very beneficial.
Hi Alteryx team,
It would be great to have a loader for Azure HDInsight. I am aware that there is a loader available for HDFS but a lot of companies are migrating to HDInsight.
Thank you very much for considering this idea.
Regards,
Jan Laznicka
Hello Alteryx Team,
Would you consider creating a metadata loader for Databricks? I can imagine this being a part of the Analytical workflows section and be catalogued in a similar way like Alteryx workflows. On a number of clients, we are seeing Databricks jobs being used as a complement to Alteryx workflows and a possibility to have them both catalogued in Alteryx Connect would be of great benefit.
Thank you very much for considering this idea.
Regards,
Jan Laznicka
I'm using HP Vertica as a data source of Tableau.
At this time I'm considering to install metadata management tool in my company.
But there is no name of HP Vertica on available list of Alteryx Connect.
I would be grateful if Alteryx could release a metadata loader of HP Vertica.
The share of Vertica increase gradually in Japan.
The addition of the On-Premise PowerBI loader is very beneficial. The current loader grabs PBI workspaces, workbooks, dashboards, and database connections all important to the PBIX files. It would also be an huge benefit if Connect could capture Paginated Reports (RDL file extension) information.
Thank you.
Jason Melik