Alation AI Agent SDK

The Alation AI Agent SDK is a Python library that enables AI agents to access and leverage metadata from the Alation Data Catalog.

Overview

This SDK provides a simple, programmatic way for AI applications to:

• Retrieve contextual information from the Alation catalog using natural language questions
• Search for and retrieve data products by product ID or natural language queries
• Customize response formats using signature specifications

Installation

pip install alation-ai-agent-sdk

Prerequisites

To use the SDK, you'll need:

• Python 3.10 or higher
• Access to an Alation Data Catalog instance
• A valid refresh token or client_id and secret. For more details, refer to the Authentication Guide.
• If you cannot obtain service account credentials (admin only), see the User Account Authentication Guide for instructions.

Quick Start

from alation_ai_agent_sdk import AlationAIAgentSDK, ServiceAccountAuthParams

# Initialize the SDK using service account authentication (recommended)

sdk = AlationAIAgentSDK(
    base_url="https://your-alation-instance.com",
    auth_method="service_account",
    auth_params=ServiceAccountAuthParams(
        client_id="your-client-id",
        client_secret="your-client-secret"
    )
)

# Ask a question about your data
response = sdk.get_context(
    "What tables contain sales information?"
)
print(response)

# Use a signature to customize the response format
signature = {
    "table": {
        "fields_required": ["name", "title", "description"]
    }
}

response = sdk.get_context(
    "What are the customer tables?",
    signature
)
print(response)

# Retrieve a data product by ID
data_product_by_id = sdk.get_data_products(product_id="finance:loan_performance_analytics")
print(data_product_by_id)

# Search for data products using a natural language query
data_products_by_query = sdk.get_data_products(query="customer analytics dashboards")
print(data_products_by_query)

Core Features

Response Customization with Signatures

You can customize the data returned by the Alation context tool using signatures:

# Only include specific fields for tables
table_signature = {
    "table": {
        "fields_required": ["name", "description", "url"]
    }
}

response = sdk.get_context(
    "What are our fact tables?",
    table_signature
)

For detailed documentation on signature format and capabilities, see Using Signatures .

Getting Available Tools

# Get all available tools
tools = sdk.get_tools()

Using the UpdateCatalogAssetMetadata Tool

The UpdateCatalogAssetMetadata tool allows you to update metadata for one or more Alation catalog assets using custom field values.

Example

from alation_ai_agent_sdk import AlationAIAgentSDK, ServiceAccountAuthParams

sdk = AlationAIAgentSDK(
    base_url="https://your-alation-instance.com",
    auth_method="service_account",
    auth_params=ServiceAccountAuthParams(
        client_id="your-client-id",
        client_secret="your-client-secret"
    )
)

custom_field_values = [
    {
        "oid": "123",
        "otype": "table",
        "field_id": 8,
        "value": "Updated value"
    },
    # ... more objects ...
]

result = sdk.update_catalog_asset_metadata(custom_field_values)
print(result)

Check Job Status Tool

The check_job_status tool allows you to check the status of a bulk metadata job in Alation by job ID.

Example Usage

from alation_ai_agent_sdk import AlationAIAgentSDK

sdk = AlationAIAgentSDK(
    base_url="https://your-alation-instance.com",
    auth_method="service_account",
    auth_params=("your-client-id", "your-client-secret")
)

job_status = sdk.check_job_status(123)
print(job_status)

• Parameters:
  • job_id (int): The integer job identifier returned by a previous bulk operation.
• Returns:
  • The job status and details as a JSON object.