Export Data Dictionary and Source to Target Documentation...

[FogoFortitude]

As my Alteryx workflows are becoming more complex and involve integrating and conforming more and more data sources it is becoming increasingly important to be able to communicate what the output fields mean and how they were created (ie transformation rules) as output for end user consumption; particular the file target state output. 

It would be great if Alteryx could do the following: 

1. Produce a simple data dictionary from the Select tool and the Output tool. The Select tool more or less contains everything that is important to the business user; It would be awesome to know of way to export this along with the actual data produced by the output tool (hopefully this is something I've overlooked and is already offered).

Examples:

• using Excel would be to produce the output data set in one sheet and the data dictionary for all of its attributes in the second sheet.
• For an odbc output you could load the data set to the database and have the option to either create a data dictionary as a database table or csv file (you'd also want to offer the ability to append that data to the existing dictionary file or table. 

2. This one is more complex; but would be awesome. If the workflow used could be exported into a spreadsheet Source to Target (S2T) format along with supporting metadata / data dictionary for every step of the ETL process. This is necessary when I need to communicate my ETL processes to someone that cannot afford to purchase an alteryx licence but are required to review and approved the ETL process that I have built. I'd be happy to provide examples of how someone would likely want to see that formatted. 

[Claje]

Hi,

I happened upon this and I'm hoping I can add some context for you if you're still looking - I realize this is from March.

Have you looked at the "Field Info" tool - available in the Developer toolset?  It should provide the information you are looking for out of the Select tool, and you can attach it to an output so that the mapping is provided as well.

Have you looked at Alteryx macros at all?  You should be able to build out a macro with a few different output options "relatively" easily, that would allow you to leverage field info and some quick settings to standardize outputs to csv/database tables, or other locations.

As far as Source to Target mapping, I think its complexity depends on how your data is pulled in, as well as the source of that data.  I've played around with some custom SQL parsing in Alteryx to turn SQL queries into mapping documents that I consider about 95% accurate - since this is homegrown code, it conforms to my expectations around SQL structure, and doesn't necessarily function against all SQL.  I would love a more robust toolset relating to documentation, and it seems like there has to be a better method for generating S2T mapping dynamically, leveraging code to do so.  I'm not aware of any such toolset built into Alteryx today, unfortunately.

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