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name: Overview
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# Overview
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Atlas is a scalable and extensible set of core foundational governance services – enabling
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enterprises to effectively and efficiently meet their compliance requirements within Hadoop and
allows integration with the whole enterprise data ecosystem.
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Apache Atlas provides open metadata management and governance capabilities for organizations
to build a catalog of their data assets, classify and govern these assets and provide collaboration
capabilities around these data assets for data scientists, analysts and the data governance team.

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## Features

### Metadata types & instances
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   * Pre-defined types for various Hadoop and non-Hadoop metadata
   * Ability to define new types for the metadata to be managed
   * Types can have primitive attributes, complex attributes, object references; can inherit from other types
   * Instances of types, called entities, capture metadata object details and their relationships
   * REST APIs to work with types and instances allow easier integration

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### Classification
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   * Ability to dynamically create classifications - like PII, EXPIRES_ON, DATA_QUALITY, SENSITIVE
   * Classifications can include attributes - like expiry_date attribute in EXPIRES_ON classification
   * Entities can be associated with multiple classifications, enabling easier discovery and security enforcement
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   * Propagation of classifications via lineage - automatically ensures that classifications follow the data as it goes through various processing
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### Lineage
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   * Intuitive UI to view lineage of data as it moves through various processes
   * REST APIs to access and update lineage
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### Search/Discovery
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   * Intuitive UI to search entities by type, classification, attribute value or free-text
   * Rich REST APIs to search by complex criteria
   * SQL like query language to search entities - Domain Specific Language (DSL)
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### Security & Data Masking
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   * Fine grained security for metadata access, enabling controls on access to entity instances and operations like add/update/remove classifications
   * Integration with Apache Ranger enables authorization/data-masking on data access based on classifications associated with entities in Apache Atlas. For example:
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      * who can access data classified as PII, SENSITIVE
      * customer-service users can only see last 4 digits of columns classified as NATIONAL_ID
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## Getting Started
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   * [What's new in Apache Atlas 2.1?](#/WhatsNew-2.1)
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   * [Build & Install](#/Installation)
   * [Quick Start](#/QuickStart)
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## API Documentation
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   * <a href="api/v2/index.html">REST API Documentation</a>
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   * [Export & Import REST API Documentation](#/ImportExportAPI)
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   * <a href="../api/rest.html">Legacy API Documentation</a>
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## Developer Setup Documentation
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   * [Developer Setup: Eclipse](#/EclipseSetup)