How to search and discover assets

Atlan is a living catalog of all your data assets and knowledge. It lets you quickly discover and access your data, along with the tribal knowledge and business context.

Its Google-like search and Amazon-like filtering experience isn't just for data tables. It also extends to a variety of data assets, like columns, databases, SQL queries, BI dashboards, and much more.

Search superpowers

Let's find out what makes Atlan's search intuitive and super quick.

Intelligent keyword recognition

Atlan supports powerful, intelligent search. When you search using keywords, the keywords in the matching search results will be highlighted for easy recognition. Even if your keyword contains an underscore _ or a period . — for example, instacart_order — both keywords will be highlighted across all search results.

Search from anywhere

There are multiple ways to start your search:

• Click the search bar on the home page
• Click Discover all assets just below the search bar on the home page
• Click Assets in the left-side panel

Search using context

The Assets section offers a variety of filters to narrow down your search. Here are the different types of filters that you can use:

• Connector: Search by connectors, chosen from a list of connections within Atlan.
• Certificate: Search based on the certificate attached to data assets, such as Verified, Draft, Deprecated, and No certificate.
• Owners: Filter by selecting one or more users. You can also toggle between users and groups to filter based on a group of users.
• Tags: Filter by user-generated tags, such as public, PII, and more.
• Terms: Filter by terms from your glossaries, such as cost, revenue, or P&L.
• Properties: Filter data assets by other properties, like name, description, last updated, and so on.

Atlan's search results include a quick count of all the resulting data assets grouped by type. As you apply the filters, you'll see these counts change in real time.

You can also enter a keyword in the search bar and filter your results by a specific type of data asset. For instance, enter the keyword order in the search bar and then click the Column tab to view column results for your searched keyword.

Sort search results

Atlan allows you to sort your search results in different ways. This helps you quickly find the assets you're interested in. Sorting options include:

• Relevance: Sort by how closely the search results match your searched keywords.
• Name: Sort by the asset name in an alphabetical or a reverse alphabetical order.
• Last updated on Atlan: Sort by the newest or oldest updated assets.
• Order: Sort the search results in an ascending or descending order.
• Popularity: Sort Snowflake and Google BigQuery assets by the most or least popular assets. 

Search with patterns

You can refine your search in Atlan with the following patterns:

• Exact match search: Wrap the search terms within double quotation marks "" when typing it in the search bar — for example, "instacart_total_users".
• Combined string of database, schema, and table: For a more data-friendly search experience, copy the combined string of database.schema.table (or schema.table) from your SQL editor and paste it in the search bar — for example, "atlan_db"."public"."instacart_total_orders".

See only what you want to see

Atlan now gives you the option to customize your search. Want to show or hide certain fields in your search results? Click the eye icon next to the search bar to set each field to Show or Hide.