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Alkera keeps a lineage graph of the data your connections reach: which tables produce which, and which columns feed which. The agent reads this graph to answer the question that matters before a change lands: what breaks if I touch this?
A browsable lineage view is coming soon. Today, ask the agent about lineage in a chat, such as “What feeds analytics.revenue?” or “What breaks if I drop orders.discount_code?”

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Grains

Lineage is recorded at two grains.
  • Table grain. A table or view is produced from other tables.
  • Column grain. A column is produced from other columns, tagged with how it was derived, such as a rename, a cast, an aggregate, or a join key.
Column lineage comes from parsing the SQL that builds a view or model. Where that is not possible, Alkera falls back to the table grain rather than guessing.

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Certainty

Every edge records how directly the flow was observed, from weakest to strongest. A connection can never claim an edge stronger than its access justifies. A connection that cannot read query history never produces an observed edge. When the agent reports lineage, it says how each edge was observed, so you can treat it as evidence rather than proof.

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Where it comes from

Lineage is built from your connections, not from what the agent did last turn. Alkera reads table and view definitions, and query history where the connection allows it. Alkera builds the table grain first, then fills in column lineage.

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Blast radius

Before a change such as dropping a column, renaming one, changing its type, or dropping a table, the agent pushes the change through the column graph and classifies the result:
  • Breaking. Something downstream depends on what you are removing.
  • Potentially breaking. A dependency exists, but Alkera cannot prove it breaks.
  • Non-breaking. Nothing downstream in the paths it checked depends on it.
It reports the affected downstream assets with the verdict, which also tells you which checks are worth rerunning.

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Lineage and knowledge

Knowledge base entries can be filed on a lineage node, such as a table or a column. The meaning of an asset, its gotchas, and how it is produced stay together, and the agent finds them all when it works with that asset.

Agent & Tools

How the agent uses lineage before it changes anything.

Knowledge Base

What your data means, attached to the assets it describes.