Crawl Microsoft SQL Server

Crawling Microsoft SQL Server extracts metadata from your databases, schemas, tables, views, and columns into Atlan's data catalog. This enables you to discover, understand, and govern your SQL Server data assets with features like lineage tracking, data quality monitoring, and collaborative documentation.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• Configured Microsoft SQL Server user permissions
• Set up private network access for your Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon RDS or Amazon EC2 if using a private netwo
• Reviewed the order of operations for workflow setup

Create crawler workflow

Follow these steps to create a workflow for Microsoft SQL Server:

1. In the top right of any screen, navigate to New and then click New Workflow.
2. From the list of packages, select SQL Server Assets and click on Setup Workflow.

Choose extraction method

Atlan offers three extraction methods to connect to your Microsoft SQL Server instance. Select the method that best fits your security and infrastructure requirements:

Direct

Atlan connects directly to your Microsoft SQL Server database to crawl metadata. Choose your authentication method:

Basic authentication

To enter your Microsoft SQL Server credentials:

1. For Host, enter the availability group listener name (or PrivateLink endpoint for your Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon RDS or Amazon EC2 instance).
2. For Port, enter the port on which Microsoft SQL Server is available (default is 1433).
3. For Username, enter the username you created when setting up user permissions.
4. For Password, enter the password you created when setting up user permissions.
5. For Database, enter the name of the database you want to connect to.
6. For Enable SSL, select True to enable SSL or False to disable it.
7. Click Test Authentication to confirm connectivity to Microsoft SQL Server.
8. Once authentication is successful, click Next.

Service principal authentication

To enter your Microsoft Entra service principal credentials:

1. For Host, enter the availability group listener name (or PrivateLink endpoint for your Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon RDS or Amazon EC2 instance).
2. For Port, enter the port on which Microsoft SQL Server is available (default is 1433).
3. For Azure AD Principal ID (Client ID), enter the application (client) ID you copied for your service principal.
4. For Azure AD Principal Secret (Client Secret), enter the client secret you copied for your service principal.
5. For Database, enter the name of the database you want to connect to.
6. For Enable SSL, select True to enable SSL or False to disable it.
7. Click Test Authentication to confirm connectivity to Microsoft SQL Server.
8. Once authentication is successful, click Next.

Offline

Use this method for on-premises Microsoft SQL Server instances that can't be accessed directly by Atlan's cloud service. First extract metadata using Atlan's metadata-extractor tool and then make it available in S3.

To enter your S3 details:

1. For Bucket name, enter the name of your S3 bucket or Atlan's bucket.
2. For Bucket prefix, enter the S3 prefix under which all the metadata files exist. These include database.json, columns-<database>.json, and related files.
3. (Optional) For Bucket region, enter the name of the S3 region.
4. Once completed, navigate to the bottom of the screen and click Next.

Agent

Use Atlan's Secure Agent to extract metadata within your organization's secure environment. This method is ideal for highly regulated environments or when network restrictions prevent direct access.

1. Select the Agent tab.
2. Configure the Microsoft SQL Server data source by adding the secret keys for your secret store. For details on the required fields, refer to the Direct tab.
3. Complete the Secure Agent configuration by following the instructions in the How to configure Secure Agent for workflow execution guide.
4. Click Next after completing the configuration.

Configure connection

Complete the Microsoft SQL Server connection configuration:

1. Provide a Connection Name that represents your source environment. For example, you might use values like production, development, gold, or analytics.
2. To change the users able to manage this connection, change the users or groups listed under Connection Admins. If you don't specify any user or group, nobody can manage the connection - not even admins.
3. To prevent users from querying any Microsoft SQL Server data, set Allow SQL Query to No.
4. To prevent users from previewing any Microsoft SQL Server data, set Allow Data Preview to No.
5. At the bottom of the screen, click Next to proceed.

Configure crawler

Before running the Microsoft SQL Server crawler, you can further configure it. If an asset appears in both the include and exclude filters, the exclude filter takes precedence.

• To select the assets you want to include in crawling, click Include Metadata. (Defaults to all assets if none are specified.)
• To select the assets you want to exclude from crawling, click Exclude Metadata. (Defaults to no assets if none are specified.)
• To have the crawler ignore tables and views based on a naming convention, specify a regular expression in the Exclude regex for tables & views field. You can also specify the following system tables to exclude from crawling -  sys*, MSmerge*, dbo.sys*, MSrepl*, IH*, MSpeer*, cdc.*, MS*history, MS*agent, MSdist*, MSpub*, MSsubcri*, MSdbms*, MSdynamic*, and MSagent*. Note: this list isn't exhaustive; for more information, refer to source documentation.
• For Advanced Config, keep Default for the default configuration or click Custom to configure the crawler:
  • For Enable Source Level Filtering, click True to enable schema-level filtering at source or click False to disable it.
  • For Use JDBC Internal Methods, click True to enable JDBC internal methods for data extraction or click False to disable it.

Run crawler

To run the Microsoft SQL Server crawler, after completing the steps earlier:

1. To check for any permissions or other configuration issues before running the crawler, click Preflight checks.
2. You can either:
   • To run the crawler once immediately, at the bottom of the screen, click the Run button.
   • To schedule the crawler to run hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, at the bottom of the screen, click the Schedule Run button.

After the crawler completes, you see the assets on Atlan's asset page! 🎉

Next steps

• Mine query history through S3 - Run the SQL Server Miner to generate lineage from your historical SQL queries.

See also

Explore Microsoft SQL Server connector references and validation tools.

• What does Atlan crawl from Microsoft SQL Server - Learn about the Microsoft SQL Server assets and metadata that Atlan discovers and catalogs.
• Preflight checks for Microsoft SQL Server - Verify prerequisites before setting up the Microsoft SQL Server connector.