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What is a real world example of using attributes of Atlas tags?

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What is the intended use of Atlas tag attributes? You have to apply a value to an attribute when you attach a tag to an entity.

What is a real world example of how attributes would be used.

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Rising Star

@Carolyn, an example that leverages tag attributes is concept of a data lease or duration in which the entity is valid. For example, we could have tags called ACTIVE_AFTER, EXPIRES_ON both of which can have an attribute effective_date. On different entities we could then set different values of the effective_date attribute once we tag them with ACTIVE_AFTER or EXPIRES_ON tags. So different entities could have different validity dates through the values set for effective_date on the entity. This can be used to manage the period during which an asset is effective. Once entities are tagged, the tags and attributes flow down to Ranger and you can write a single security policy to prevent specific groups of users from accessing all assets tagged with EXPIRES_ON after the effective_date without having to write 1 policy per entity. Hope this helps.

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@cduby

From what I understand, Tags can be used for enforcing policies and filtering purpose.

For example:

  • Tag T has attributes Time, Location, Co-ordinates.
  • Tag T is associated with entity A, with attribute values Time=X, Location=Y, Co-ordinates=Z.
  • Tag T is also associated with different entities with different attribute values.
  • The use-case can be to fetch all entities whose location is "Y". The above tagging can help in filtering those entities with specific attributes.

AFAIK, filtering at the tag attribute level is not yet supported in Atlas.

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Rising Star

@Carolyn, an example that leverages tag attributes is concept of a data lease or duration in which the entity is valid. For example, we could have tags called ACTIVE_AFTER, EXPIRES_ON both of which can have an attribute effective_date. On different entities we could then set different values of the effective_date attribute once we tag them with ACTIVE_AFTER or EXPIRES_ON tags. So different entities could have different validity dates through the values set for effective_date on the entity. This can be used to manage the period during which an asset is effective. Once entities are tagged, the tags and attributes flow down to Ranger and you can write a single security policy to prevent specific groups of users from accessing all assets tagged with EXPIRES_ON after the effective_date without having to write 1 policy per entity. Hope this helps.

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Super Collaborator

Once Atlas has ingested data , say hive table, one can use Atlas to specify security policies on it through Ranger. How does Ranger know which entities to apply policies on ? By using "tags" .An entity(hive table for example) can be tagged . This tag appears in Ranger and you can enforce policies on entities tagged with that tag.

Please refer http://hortonworks.com/hadoop-tutorial/tag-based-policies-atlas-ranger/