What is business lineage?
Before you can explore business lineage, you will need your Atlan admin to enable the products module in your Atlan workspace.
Business lineage is a representation of relationships between your data products in Atlan. This simplified view of product lineage can help you quickly grasp the provenance and relationships of your data products and draw links in the chain of your asset universe.
As a map to your data estate, business lineage can help:
- Data producers understand how their data products are used within the organization.
- Data consumers gain visibility into the provenance of the data products they use.
- Both producers and consumers better understand the business relevance and impact of data.
View product lineage
Atlan currently does not support generating lineage for products with more than 30,000 assets. This is to ensure that the lineage generation workflows are optimized to run efficiently.
Output ports determine the relationships between your data products. For example, if your data product includes assets that are designated as output ports in another data product:
- within the same domain or subdomain,
- across different subdomains within the same domain,
- or across entirely different domains,
...this relationship will be visualized as business lineage.
The assets designated as output ports in other data products serve as input ports for your data product, automatically linking them based on your asset selection. Note that you cannot set input ports manually. You can, however, designate output ports while creating a data product.
Processing lineage between data products involves running cron jobs every hour. For example:
- For products with
<10kassets, lineage appears in 15-20 minutes. - For products with
>10kassets, lineage may take up to 1 hour to be processed.
Supported scenarios
In addition to the scenarios listed above, product lineage will be captured when:
- Creating products with shared assets:
- Product 1 → Product 2: If Product 1 is created with Asset 1 as an output port, and Product 2 is consequently created with Asset 1 as a regular asset, lineage will be generated from Product 1 to Product 2 after processing has been completed.
- Product 2 → Product 1: If Product 1 is created with Asset 1 as a regular asset, and Product 2 is later created with Asset 1 marked as an output port, lineage will be generated from Product 2 to Product 1.
- Lineage will be generated in either scenario whether products are created via the browse option or rules.
- Removing or modifying assets:
- If Asset 1 is removed from Product 2, lineage between Products 1 and 2 will be removed after processing.
- If Asset 1 is unmarked as an output port in Product 1, lineage will be removed between the two products.
- If either Product 1 or 2 is archived, lineage will be removed.
- Dynamic asset listing: For example, if Product 1 is created with Asset 1 (output port) and Product 2 is created with Asset 2 (regular asset) using a tag-based rule (for example, all assets with the
PIItag), then adding aPIItag to Asset 1 will generate lineage from Product 1 to Product 2. This is also applicable to data product creation with term-based rules and more.
To view product lineage:
- From the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Products.
- To select a data product, you can either:
- From the left navigation menu on the Products homepage, use the search bar or select the relevant domain and then select a data product.
- In the Explore products section on the Products homepage, select a recently viewed, starred, or new data product.
- From the tabs along the top of your product page, click the Lineage tab.
- On the lineage graph, the home icon indicates the base product. (Optional) Hover over any data product to view a metadata popover for more context - including domain name, criticality and sensitivity levels, owner, and product score. You can also open lineage in a new tab.
- (Optional) For any applicable product, click the view output port menu to view output ports:
- The default view shows 10 output ports. Click Show more to view the full list of output ports.
- Hover over an output port in the list and then click the upward arrow to view lineage for that output port asset in a new tab.
- (Optional) To collapse the sidebar, to the left of the sidebar, click the rightward arrow.
- (Optional) From the top right of the lineage graph:
- Click the Find in canvas search bar to search for any specific products on the lineage graph.
- Click the downward arrow to download product lineage as an image.
- Click the eye icon to set preferences for the lineage graph:
- For Additional metadata, show or hide the following context for your assets - domain name, announcements, or sensitivity and criticality levels.
- For Line arrows, show or hide the arrows that indicate data flows on the lineage graph.
- Click the question mark icon to share feedback.
- (Optional) From the bottom right of the lineage graph:
- Click the minimap icon to view an abridged version of the lineage graph.
- Click the refocus icon to refocus your view of the lineage graph to reset to the default view, selected node, or back to the base product.
- Click the fullscreen icon to expand the lineage view to fullscreen mode.
- Click the minus or plus icons to zoom out or zoom in on the lineage graph, respectively.
View domain lineage
Domain lineage is a visual representation of the relationships between your domains and subdomains connected through data products. It can serve as a map to your business domain, helping you understand how data products are used within a specific domain.
For example, if there are subdomains that do not contain any products, this comprehensive view will help you target those subdomains for deprecation. Or, if a product is used across multiple subdomains, this may signal the need for more robust measures for change management.
When viewing domain lineage, you can view the hierarchy of subdomains and products within a specific domain.
To view domain lineage:
- From the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Products.
- To select a data domain, you can either:
- From the navigation menu on the Products homepage, use the search bar or select the relevant domain or subdomain.
- From the top right of Discover domains, select your data domain of interest. If you cannot find your data domain, click the View all button to view more domains.
- From the tabs along the top of your domain page, click the Lineage tab.
- On the lineage graph, the home icon indicates the base domain.
- (Optional) To collapse the sidebar, to the left of the sidebar, click the rightward arrow.
- (Optional) From the top right of the lineage graph:
- Click the Find in canvas search bar to search for any specific products on the lineage graph.
- Click the downward arrow to download product lineage as an image.
- Click the plus icon to expand all domain nodes to view data products. Hover over a data product in the list and then click the upward arrow to view lineage for that product in a new tab.
- Click the eye icon to set preferences for the lineage graph. For Additional metadata, show or hide the following context for your assets - domain type and announcements.
- Click the question mark icon to share feedback.
- (Optional) From the bottom right of the lineage graph:
- Click the minimap icon to view an abridged version of the lineage graph.
- Click the refocus icon to refocus your view of the lineage graph to reset to the default view, selected node, or back to the base product.
- Click the fullscreen icon to expand the lineage view to fullscreen mode.
- Click the minus or plus icons to zoom out or zoom in on the lineage graph, respectively.
Archived products and domains are removed from business lineage. However, for any archived asset that may have been designated as an output port in active data products, the lineage links created by that asset will be visible on the lineage graph.