Apache Atlas metadata collection overview

Actions performed in cluster services create metadata in Atlas.

Atlas provides addons to many Hadoop cluster services to collect metadata when the service performs certain operations. The Atlas addon or “hook” assembles a predefined set of information and sends it to the Atlas server. The Atlas server reads through the metadata and creates entities to represent the data sets and processes described by the metadata. Atlas may create one or many entities for each event it processes. For example, when a user creates a namespace in HBase, Atlas creates a single entity to represent the new HBase namespace. When a user runs a query in Hive Server 2, Atlas may create many entities, including entities to describe the query itself, any tables involved in the query, entities for each column for each table involved in the query, and so on.

The following table lists the services that are integrated with Atlas by default. For each service, the table lists the events produced by the service that Atlas acknowledges and the entities Atlas produces in response to each event. Note that there isn’t always a one-to-one relationship between the event and an entity: the entities produced from a single event depend on the event itself.

Source	Actions Acknowledged	Entities Created
Hive Server 2	ALTER DATABASE CREATE DATABASE DROP DATABASE	hive_db, hive_db_ddl
	ALTER TABLE CREATE TABLE CREATE TABLE AS SELECT DROP TABLE	hive_process, hive_process_execution, hive_table, hive_table_ddl, hive_column, hive_column_lineage, hive_storagedesc, hdfs_path
	ALTER VIEW ALTERVIEW_AS_SELECT CREATE VIEW CREATE VIEW AS SELECT DROP VIEW	hive_process, hive_process_execution, hive_table, hive_column, hive_column_lineage, hive_table_ddl
	INSERT INTO (SELECT) INSERT OVERWRITE	hive_process, hive_process_execution
HBase	alter_async	hbase_namespace, hbase_table, hbase_column_family
	create_namespace alter_namespace drop_namespace	hbase_namespace
	create table alter table drop table drop_all tables	alter table (create column family), alter table (alter column family), alter table (delete column family)
	alter table (create column family) alter table (alter column family) alter table (delete column family)	hive_process, hive_process_execution
Impala*	CREATETABLE_AS_SELECT	impala_process, impala_process_execution, impala_column_lineage, hive_db hive_table_ddl
	CREATEVIEW	impala_process, impala_process_execution, impala_column_lineage, hive_table_ddl
	ALTERVIEW_AS_SELECT	impala_process, impala_process_execution, impala_column_lineage, hive_table_ddl
	INSERT INTO INSERT OVERWRITE	impala_process, impala_process_execution
Spark*	CREATE TABLE USING CREATE TABLE AS SELECT, CREATE TABLE USING ... AS SELECT	spark_process
	CREATE VIEW AS SELECT,	spark_process
	INSERT INTO (SELECT), LOAD DATA [LOCAL] INPATH	spark_process

^*For these sources, Atlas collects the corresponding asset metadata from HMS.