External Catalogs

Users who want to use tagging capabilities outside of Immuta and pull tags from external table schemas can connect Alation, Collibra, or Microsoft Purview as an external catalog. If users have an unsupported catalog, or have customized their integration, they can connect through the REST Catalog using the Immuta API. Users can also connect to and ingest tags from Snowflake and Databricks Unity Catalog onto Snowflake and Databricks Unity Catalog data sources.

Once they have been connected, Immuta will ingest a data dictionary from the catalog that will apply data source and column tags directly onto data sources. These tags can then be used to drive governance policies or classification frameworks. Using existing metadata from external catalogs can allow users to scale policy creation quickly.

Supported external catalogs

Immuta supports the following external catalogs:

• Alation

• Collibra

• Microsoft Purview

• Custom REST catalog

• Databricks Unity Catalog tag ingestion

• Snowflake tag ingestion

Alation

Immuta's Alation integration supports importing both tags and custom fields, Alation's two primary ways of allowing data stewards to apply metadata to data assets.

• Tags: Tags are a single word or phrase that can be attached to most Alation objects by nearly anyone. For instance, users can add a PCI tag for financial data.

• Custom fields: Custom fields are key-value pairs that can only be attached and removed by authorized users. Unlike tags, custom fields can have multiple values associated with a single key. For example, the custom field DK_STEWARD could have MARKETING, FINANCE, and CUSTOMER values associated with it. Using Alation custom fields allows you to explicitly control who can modify information associated with that field inside of Alation, whereas Alation standard tags are modifiable by any user inside of Alation.

When pulled into Immuta, Alation tags and custom fields will be applied to data sources as either column or data source tags in Immuta. Importing both Alation tags and custom fields into Immuta provides full flexibility for customers leveraging the Alation enterprise data catalog, no matter what operating model they choose to document their metadata in Alation.

To configure Alation, see the Configure an external catalog guide.

Custom REST catalog

If users have an unsupported catalog or have customized their catalog integration, they can connect through the REST Catalog using the Immuta API.

For more details about using a custom REST catalog with Immuta, see the Custom REST Catalog Interface Introduction.

Databricks Unity Catalog tag ingestion

Design partner preview: This feature is only available to select accounts. Reach out to your Immuta representative to enable this feature.

Users can connect their Databricks Unity Catalog account to allow Immuta to ingest Databricks tags and apply them to Databricks data sources. To learn more about Databricks Unity Catalog tag ingestion, see the Databricks Unity Catalog reference guide.

Microsoft Purview catalog

Private preview

The Microsoft Purview catalog integration is only available to select accounts. Contact your Immuta representative to enable this feature.

The Microsoft Purview catalog integration with Immuta currently supports ingestion of Classifications and Managed attributes as tags for Databricks Unity Catalog, Snowflake, and Azure Synapse Analytics data sources and their associated columns. Additionally, data source and column descriptions from the connected Microsoft Purview catalog will be pulled into Immuta.

Managed attributes limitations

Managed attributes are supported, but have the following limitations:

• If a managed attribute is applied to an Immuta data source but later expires, it will still appear as a tag on the data source. Expired attributes must be removed from the object in Purview for the tag to be removed from the Immuta data source.

• The following managed attribute data types are not supported and will not be applied to Immuta data sources as tags:

  • Dates

  • Number types

  • Rich text

Managed attributes limitations

Managed attributes are supported, but have the following limitations:

• If a managed attribute is applied to an Immuta data source but later expires, it will still appear as a tag on the data source. Expired attributes must be removed from the object in Purview for the tag to be removed from the Immuta data source.

• The following managed attribute data types are not supported and will not be applied to Immuta data sources as tags:

  • Dates

  • Number types

  • Rich text

Snowflake tag ingestion

Users can connect a Snowflake account to allow Immuta to ingest Snowflake tags onto Snowflake data sources. To learn more about Snowflake tag ingestion, see the Snowflake reference guide.

External catalog behaviors

• Tags ingested from external catalogs cannot be edited within Immuta. To edit, delete, or add a tag from an external catalog to a data source or column, make the change in the external catalog.

• You can configure multiple external catalogs within a single tenant of Immuta, but only one external catalog can be linked to a data source.

• Immuta searches all external catalog providers once per day and links data sources without an external catalog attached to them to the first catalog that matches.

Resources

• To configure an external catalog, see the Configuration how-to guide.

• To learn more about how Immuta can automatically tag your data with Discover, see the Discover introduction.