📟Metadata Warehouse

Working with data teams we learned one thing for sure – each one is subject to very domain-specific or otherwise complex challenges that cannot be solved with a one-size-fits-all solution. To free up the full potential of Alvin's powerful metadata model, we're introducing the original Metadata Warehouse. It can be queried directly to obtain tailored metadata insights, instantly.

How does it work?

The Query Editor connects you to the same dataset accessed by Alvin's out-of-the-box features and insights.

✨pageWhat metadata is available?

To make things as easy as possible it reads SQL with all its familiar functionalities. It is always the Google (Standard) SQL dialect, no matter what tools you have connected to your Alvin environment.

Where do I start?

While the Query Editor is built with the most complex questions in your data exploration journey in mind, we’ve made sure its potential is easily accessible from day one. There are three ways to go about it.

Access it directly from the main menu to start writing from scratch or to paste in your custom query.

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Explore the constantly expanding list of example queries on the left. It’s there to inspire and help you start useful investigations and exploration workflows.

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Open the underlying queries behind most insights, statistics or searches you see around the Alvin UI. From there, you can tweak them to get more specific results, add custom filters, group and more.

Composing a query

Whether you’re starting from scratch or editing a query, the process looks the same.

You can use named parameters in the query through @ followed by any identifier, like this:

@parameter_name1, @parameter_name2

Parameters will automatically be processed by the editor and will appear in the toolbar for you to fill in. To edit the values, click the gear on top right of the editor.

When composing a query, you can use autocomplete to help you write the query as well as getting additional context of the available columns.

At all times you can expand the Available Tables tabs from the menu on the left to access a glossary of available metadata. Hover over the column names to see their definitions.

Results

After running a query you can hide or show the columns in the result data, and page through the result set.

You can export the results for further analysis in different formats such as CSV, JSON, or Parquet.

To easily share the results with anyone in your organisation, you can just copy the URL from your browser. They will see the same query and results as you.

Note that query results expire after 24 hours, after which you will have to re-run it.