Overview

When an API request is made to Alation that retrieves more than 100 objects, the results will be paginated. That is to say, spread out over multiple API calls.

Pagination

To override the default of 100 objects, you must paginate the API response.

Manual

For most APIs, the limit and skip parameters can be used to paginate the results manually.

The BI Source API (GBM v2) uses an offset parameter instead of skip. Although named differently, offset works the same as skip.

The Data Sources API (OCF) /integration/v2/datasource/{datasource_id}/available_schemas/ endpoint uses a page parameter instead of skip. The page parameter specifies the page to fetch. For example, if limit is set to 10, a page value of 1 would fetch the first 10 results, and a page value of 2 would fetch the next 10 results (results 11-20).

Automatic URL

Alation will automatically create the url for the next set of objects. You can find this in the response headers with the key X-Next-Page. If the key X-Next-Page is not there, then there are no more objects to retrieve. See the example below for more details.

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GBM v2 API

The BI Sources API (GBM v2) does not provide an X-Next-Page key.

Object Limit

By default, Alation puts a hard limit of 1,000 objects on all API calls, even when using pagination. This limit can be changed by modifying the alation_conf parameter alation.api.catalog.limit. There is no upper limit, but increasing the limit also increases the risk of problems with system performance.

Alation Cloud Service customers can submit a support ticket to request this change. Customers with on-premises instances of Alation can change this on their Alation server. For help with alation_conf, see Using alation_conf.