Senior Data Analyst at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 10
Nov 25, 2025
I have been using Alation Data Catalog for the past year now. My main use case for Alation Data Catalog is updating data descriptions and making sure analysts have what they need to do their job. We mainly use Snowflake and DBT to update descriptions and documentation that then gets automatically pulled into Alation Data Catalog for analysts to use.
My main use case for Alation Data Catalog is for data governance and for non-tech business users who especially want to understand some tech terms. For example, we have a huge data warehouse where every field in each database, in that particular table, in that particular schema, needs to be explained, and we try to streamline that technicality in a user-friendly non-technical way. That is where we use Alation Data Catalog to do the data governance and to provide information to non-technical business users. Majorly, we do data governance and help business users, including non-tech business users, and this is the main use case for us. My advice for others looking into using Alation Data Catalog is that it is a great tool, as it can help non-business users, has a robust business glossary, and aids in making faster, strategic decisions while improving productivity. I would highly advise others to use this tool as a data governance tool.
Data Governance System Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 5
Nov 5, 2025
The main use case for Alation Data Catalog was to create a one-point reference source of truth for the entire organization. The problem is that there are so many different lines of businesses and functional areas that work in silos, and one organization does not know the data in another organization, even though their data or metadata may be related. Moreover, the same data may be used or consumed by different lines of businesses or functional areas without any collaboration. In data governance, our aim is to bring both the business and IT onto the same page.The use case for our business is to create a single point inventory of all the technical and business assets and all the metadata onto a single catalog tool, which helps any user across the enterprise be able to search the metadata and perform impact analysis using lineage features to understand the flow of metadata from source to target to the consumption layer via reporting. For that, we utilized Alation Data Catalog.
Senior Data Governance at a university with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 10
Apr 28, 2025
I had several use cases for Alation Data Catalog ( /products/alation-data-catalog-reviews ). The number one is metadata management. Additionally, analysts and data analysts were asking how we can share the SQL queries easily in a platform. So it was very much useful because I did not find any other data catalog tool where you can save and even create SQL queries.
Vice President at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Vendor
Top 20
Sep 12, 2024
We do the integration work for our multiple clients. Their problem is that many of their legacy systems lack a defined data or business glossary for their data attributes. First, they want to build a data catalog with a proper business glossary. Second, they aim to establish data lineage to track their data's transformations. Lastly, in some cases, they want to integrate data quality rules or business rules across the platform using Alation. These are the three main use cases they are looking to address.
We've recently onboarded the Power BI reports, and the inbuilt connector had an issue wherein it was not scanning the custom pages of Power BI. There's a mandate in our organization that details of the report will be on one of the custom pages. So we onboarded the custom page as well, and we have successfully achieved the task.
We're a superannuation organization, so we deal with people's pensions. We invest their money for retirement. Our users are mostly core data management professionals, including business analysts, data analysts, architects, engineers, and BI developers. There's also a handful of consumers who view content. We're working with a range of stakeholders and data sources, and we haven't covered all of the organization yet. But most of the key ones are embedded into the tool. We've built up the catalog through agile iterations or sprints. We're working with the business to understand the information, curate it, and embed that knowledge into Alation Data Catalog so that it's available to those people to support their data use cases.
Senior Data Governance Specialist at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Oct 14, 2021
We have one deployment on AWS cloud and our enterprise instances use the Alation cloud. We use it primarily for supporting our data scientists. We also use it for sharing data governance, document policy information, and data classification information. Our use cases are for a lot of data literacy and data usability.
Alation pioneered the data catalog market and is now leading its evolution into a platform for a broad range of data intelligence solutions including data search & discovery, data governance, lineage, stewardship, analytics, and digital transformation.
Thanks to its powerful Behavioral Analysis Engine, inbuilt collaboration capabilities, and open interfaces, Alation combines machine learning with human insight to successfully tackle even the most demanding challenges in data and metadata...
I have been using Alation Data Catalog for the past year now. My main use case for Alation Data Catalog is updating data descriptions and making sure analysts have what they need to do their job. We mainly use Snowflake and DBT to update descriptions and documentation that then gets automatically pulled into Alation Data Catalog for analysts to use.
My main use case for Alation Data Catalog is for data governance and for non-tech business users who especially want to understand some tech terms. For example, we have a huge data warehouse where every field in each database, in that particular table, in that particular schema, needs to be explained, and we try to streamline that technicality in a user-friendly non-technical way. That is where we use Alation Data Catalog to do the data governance and to provide information to non-technical business users. Majorly, we do data governance and help business users, including non-tech business users, and this is the main use case for us. My advice for others looking into using Alation Data Catalog is that it is a great tool, as it can help non-business users, has a robust business glossary, and aids in making faster, strategic decisions while improving productivity. I would highly advise others to use this tool as a data governance tool.
The main use case for Alation Data Catalog was to create a one-point reference source of truth for the entire organization. The problem is that there are so many different lines of businesses and functional areas that work in silos, and one organization does not know the data in another organization, even though their data or metadata may be related. Moreover, the same data may be used or consumed by different lines of businesses or functional areas without any collaboration. In data governance, our aim is to bring both the business and IT onto the same page.The use case for our business is to create a single point inventory of all the technical and business assets and all the metadata onto a single catalog tool, which helps any user across the enterprise be able to search the metadata and perform impact analysis using lineage features to understand the flow of metadata from source to target to the consumption layer via reporting. For that, we utilized Alation Data Catalog.
I had several use cases for Alation Data Catalog ( /products/alation-data-catalog-reviews ). The number one is metadata management. Additionally, analysts and data analysts were asking how we can share the SQL queries easily in a platform. So it was very much useful because I did not find any other data catalog tool where you can save and even create SQL queries.
We do the integration work for our multiple clients. Their problem is that many of their legacy systems lack a defined data or business glossary for their data attributes. First, they want to build a data catalog with a proper business glossary. Second, they aim to establish data lineage to track their data's transformations. Lastly, in some cases, they want to integrate data quality rules or business rules across the platform using Alation. These are the three main use cases they are looking to address.
We try to federate Alation Data Catalog from different parts of the project onto one platform.
We are using the solution to query databases.
We primarily use the product as a data catalog tool to search for data assets like tables or columns.
The tool's metadata cataloging is the most valuable feature.
We've recently onboarded the Power BI reports, and the inbuilt connector had an issue wherein it was not scanning the custom pages of Power BI. There's a mandate in our organization that details of the report will be on one of the custom pages. So we onboarded the custom page as well, and we have successfully achieved the task.
I use Alation Data Catalog for metadata management and data ownership, quality, and lineage.
We're a superannuation organization, so we deal with people's pensions. We invest their money for retirement. Our users are mostly core data management professionals, including business analysts, data analysts, architects, engineers, and BI developers. There's also a handful of consumers who view content. We're working with a range of stakeholders and data sources, and we haven't covered all of the organization yet. But most of the key ones are embedded into the tool. We've built up the catalog through agile iterations or sprints. We're working with the business to understand the information, curate it, and embed that knowledge into Alation Data Catalog so that it's available to those people to support their data use cases.
We have one deployment on AWS cloud and our enterprise instances use the Alation cloud. We use it primarily for supporting our data scientists. We also use it for sharing data governance, document policy information, and data classification information. Our use cases are for a lot of data literacy and data usability.