Create data contracts Private Preview
Data contracts are agreements between data producers and consumers that specify requirements for high-quality, reliable data. Add data contracts directly to supported assets in Atlan to standardize contractual obligations, organize assets with embeddable contract metadata, and enforce them with data quality rules. You can also create webhooks for data contracts to receive notifications when a contract is added or updated.
For a data contract to help build trust in your assets, it should be:
- Templatized and easily comprehensible - use Atlan's YAML contract template to create standardized contracts and push to Atlan.
- Version-controlled - continuously validate and monitor your data contracts either in runtime or real-time.
- Embeddable - embed the contract as metadata for a supported asset.
- Enforceable - enforce your contracts with data quality rules.
- Extensible - identify new specifications, generate new versions, and then compare and contrast them.
You can create webhooks for data contracts and receive notifications for when a contract is added or updated to a URL of your choice.
Supported asset types
You can create data contracts for the following asset types:
- Tables
- Views
- Materialized views
- Output port assets of data products
Supported asset metadata
Atlan maps the following asset metadata properties to its contract properties:
| Metadata property | Contract property |
|---|---|
name | dataset |
typeName | type |
userDescription or description | description |
ownerUsers | owner.users |
ownerGroups | owners.groups |
certificateStatus | certification.status |
certificateStatusMessage | certification.message |
announcementType | announcement.type |
announcementTitle | announcement.title |
announcementMessage | announcement.description |
meaningNames | terms |
classificationDef.displayName | tags.name |
classifications.propagate | tags.propagate |
classifications.restrict_propagation_through_lineage | tags.restrict_propagation_through_lineage |
classifications.restrict_propagation_through_hierarchy | tags.restrict_propagation_through_hierarchy |
column.name | columns.name |
column.userDescription or column.description | columns.description |
column.dataType | columns.data_type |
column.isPrimary | columns.primary |
!column.isNullable | columns.required |
column.precision | columns.precision |
column.numericScale | columns.scale |
| tags on column | columns.tags |
column.meaningNames | columns.terms |
| custom metadata (CM) | custom_metadata.<CM> |
Add a data contract to an asset
Any non-guest user with edit access to an asset's metadata can create, deploy, and manage data contracts. This only includes admin and member users in Atlan.
To add a data contract to an asset, you can either:
- Create a contract directly in Atlan from the Contracts tab of the asset profile. You can create and maintain data contracts as easily as editing a word document.
- Use Atlan CLI to import an existing contract from your local machine to Atlan directly or through a CI/CD pipeline. Atlan CLI is a command-line tool that you can download directly from Atlan to your local machine to create and push data contracts to Atlan. Once you have published the contract, you can also sync metadata from a contract to the governed asset in Atlan.
Once created, you can monitor and manage your data contracts in Atlan.
To add a data contract:
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On the Atlan homepage, click on all assets.
If you are using the Old UI (Classic), from the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Assets.
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(Optional) From the Filters menu on the left, click Properties and then click Has contract. Click No to filter for assets without a contract.
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From the Assets page, select an asset to open the asset sidebar.
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In the left Overview sidebar, click Add contract.
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In the Contract tab of the asset profile, you can either:
- Click Create contract to create a draft contract directly in Atlan based on asset metadata.
- Click Import contract to use Atlan CLI to import an existing contract from your local environment to Atlan. You must first install and connect Atlan CLI and then push the contract to Atlan. Refer to the developer documentation to complete the steps.
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(Optional) Click the Edit button to edit the contract.
Congrats on adding a data contract in Atlan! 🎉
View a data contract
To view a data contract:
- From the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click on all assets.
If you are using the Old UI (Classic), from the left menu of any screen in Atlan, click Assets. 2. From the Assets page, select an asset to open the asset sidebar. 3. From the left Overview sidebar, click View contract to navigate to the Contract tab in the asset profile. 4. (Optional) In the Contract tab, you can view the contract specifications for your asset in a YAML format. You can also:
- Click the Document icon to open a read-only, simplified view of your contract.
- Next to Published version, click the version dropdown to view the latest version of the contract. Select an older version and then click Compare with published version to compare them side by side.
- Click the Edit button to edit the contract.
- Click the clipboard icon to copy the YAML code.
- Under Timeline, view a timeline for the evolution of your contract.
- Under Summary, view details of who last updated your contract and when.