
Alation
Data catalog platform for data discovery, governance, and lineage
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Unified metadata governance for Hadoop and enterprise data ecosystems
Apache Atlas offers a framework for data governance, lineage, and security across Hadoop and other platforms, integrating with Ranger for access control.

Apache Atlas provides a comprehensive set of governance services that give enterprises visibility into their Hadoop environment and beyond. It captures technical and operational metadata, enriches lineage with business taxonomies, and stores everything in a common metadata repository that can be consumed by any downstream tool.
The platform integrates tightly with Apache Ranger to enforce role‑based and attribute‑based access controls at runtime. A rich collection of extensible hooks (Hive, HBase, Kafka, Impala, etc.) lets you capture metadata from a wide range of data systems. Atlas can be built with Maven or run instantly via the provided Docker images, making it suitable for both on‑premises clusters and containerized deployments.
Data engineers, compliance officers, and security teams gain a single source of truth for data assets, enabling audit‑ready lineage reports, impact analysis, and fine‑grained security policies across the enterprise data ecosystem.
When teams consider Apache Atlas, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.
Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.
Regulatory compliance reporting
Generate audit‑ready lineage reports to demonstrate data handling compliance.
Data impact analysis for schema changes
Visualize downstream dependencies to assess risk before altering tables.
Cross‑system data discovery
Search unified metadata to locate assets across Hive, Kafka, and HBase.
Fine‑grained access enforcement
Apply Ranger policies to restrict data access at row and column levels.
You can build it with Maven using `mvn clean install` and `mvn clean package -Pdist`, or run the pre‑built Docker image from the `dev-support/atlas-docker` directory.
The core platform is written in Java, but it provides REST APIs and client libraries for Java, Python, and JavaScript.
Security is enforced through Apache Ranger, supporting both role‑based (RBAC) and attribute‑based (ABAC) access controls.
Yes, Docker build instructions are included, allowing you to start Atlas with a single container command.
Contributions are accepted via GitHub pull requests or through Review Board; create a corresponding JIRA ticket and reference it in your PR.
Project at a glance
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