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File Based Lineage

Overview​

File Based Lineage is a storage and lakehouse platform. Learn more in the official File Based Lineage documentation.

The DataHub integration for File Based Lineage covers file/lakehouse metadata entities such as datasets, paths, and containers. Depending on module capabilities, it can also capture features such as lineage, usage, profiling, ownership, tags, and stateful deletion detection.

Concept Mapping​

While the specific concept mapping is still pending, this shows the generic concept mapping in DataHub.

Source ConceptDataHub ConceptNotes
Platform/account/project scopePlatform Instance, ContainerOrganizes assets within the platform context.
Core technical asset (for example table/view/topic/file)DatasetPrimary ingested technical asset.
Schema fields / columnsSchemaFieldIncluded when schema extraction is supported.
Ownership and collaboration principalsCorpUser, CorpGroupEmitted by modules that support ownership and identity metadata.
Dependencies and processing relationshipsLineage edgesAvailable when lineage extraction is supported and enabled.

Module datahub-lineage-file​

Certified

Important Capabilities​

CapabilityStatusNotes
Column-level Lineage✅Specified in the lineage file.
Table-Level Lineage✅Specified in the lineage file.

Overview​

The datahub-lineage-file module ingests metadata from File Based Lineage into DataHub. It is intended for production ingestion workflows and module-specific capabilities are documented below.

This plugin pulls lineage metadata from a yaml-formatted file. An example of one such file is located in the examples directory here.

Prerequisites​

Before running ingestion, ensure network connectivity to the source, valid authentication credentials, and read permissions for metadata APIs required by this module.

Install the Plugin​

pip install 'acryl-datahub[datahub-lineage-file]'

Starter Recipe​

Check out the following recipe to get started with ingestion! See below for full configuration options.

For general pointers on writing and running a recipe, see our main recipe guide.

source:
  type: datahub-lineage-file
  config:
    # Coordinates
    file: /path/to/file_lineage.yml
    # Whether we want to query datahub-gms for upstream data
    preserve_upstream: False

sink:
# sink configs

Config Details​

Note that a . is used to denote nested fields in the YAML recipe.

FieldDescription
file ✅
string
File path or URL to lineage file to ingest.
preserve_upstream
boolean
Whether we want to query datahub-gms for upstream data. False means it will hard replace upstream data for a given entity. True means it will query the backend for existing upstreams and include it in the ingestion run
Default: True

Capabilities​

Use the Important Capabilities table above as the source of truth for supported features and whether additional configuration is required.

Lineage File Format​

The lineage source file should be a .yml file with the following top-level keys:

version: the version of lineage file config the config conforms to. Currently, the only version released is 1.

lineage: the top level key of the lineage file containing a list of EntityNodeConfig objects

EntityNodeConfig:

  • entity: EntityConfig object
  • upstream: (optional) list of child EntityNodeConfig objects
  • fineGrainedLineages: (optional) list of FineGrainedLineageConfig objects

EntityConfig:

  • name: identifier of the entity. Typically name or guid, as used in constructing entity urn.
  • type: type of the entity (only dataset is supported as of now)
  • env: the environment of this entity. Should match the values in the table here
  • platform: a valid platform like kafka, snowflake, etc..
  • platform_instance: optional string specifying the platform instance of this entity

For example if dataset URN is urn:li:dataset:(urn:li:dataPlatform:redshift,userdb.public.customer_table,DEV) then EntityConfig will look like:

name: userdb.public.customer_table
type: dataset
env: DEV
platform: redshift

FineGrainedLineageConfig:

  • upstreamType: type of upstream entity in a fine-grained lineage; default = "FIELD_SET"
  • upstreams: (optional) list of upstream schema field urns
  • downstreamType: type of downstream entity in a fine-grained lineage; default = "FIELD_SET"
  • downstreams: (optional) list of downstream schema field urns
  • transformOperation: (optional) transform operation applied to the upstream entities to produce the downstream field(s)
  • confidenceScore: (optional) the confidence in this lineage between 0 (low confidence) and 1 (high confidence); default = 1.0

FineGrainedLineageConfig can be used to display fine grained lineage, also referred to as column-level lineage, for custom sources.

You can also view an example lineage file checked in here

Limitations​

Module behavior is constrained by source APIs, permissions, and metadata exposed by the platform. Refer to capability notes for unsupported or conditional features.

Troubleshooting​

If ingestion fails, validate credentials, permissions, connectivity, and scope filters first. Then review ingestion logs for source-specific errors and adjust configuration accordingly.

Code Coordinates​

  • Class Name: datahub.ingestion.source.metadata.lineage.LineageFileSource
  • Browse on GitHub
Questions?

If you've got any questions on configuring ingestion for File Based Lineage, feel free to ping us on our Slack.

💡 Contributing to this documentation

This page is auto-generated from the underlying source code. To make changes, please edit the relevant source files in the metadata-ingestion directory.

Tip: For quick typo fixes or documentation updates, you can click the ✏️ Edit icon directly in the GitHub UI to open a Pull Request. For larger changes and PR naming conventions, please refer to our Contributing Guide.