Lineage Troubleshooting

This page documents the known problems with lineage and the steps to resolve them. Each section describes a symptom, its cause, and the resolution. Most of these fail quietly rather than with an error, so the symptom is what you have to go on.

Getting Lineage at All

The Lineage Tab Is Not There

The container page has no Lineage tab, and opening a saved link to one gets nowhere either.

Cause: Lineage is an add-on and it is not enabled for the deployment. The entitlement is checked on every lineage request, not only when the tab renders, so a script fails the same way a browser does.

Resolution: Ask an Admin to enable it from the Add-ons side panel in the top-right menu. See Permissions.

Collect Lineage Made No Difference

The Sync ran with Collect lineage turned on and finished without error, and nothing about lineage changed.

Cause: The datastore type has no collector. Collection reads Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks, and every other type ignores the option rather than failing on it.

Resolution: For other datastores, import lineage from a data catalog or add the connections by hand. See Lineage Sources.

The Sync Succeeded and No Connections Appeared

The datastore is one of the three that support collection, the option was on, and the graph is still empty.

Cause: Usually the connection Qualytics uses cannot read the relations the collection depends on. Each datastore type exposes its history and its view definitions through specific relations, and reading those is a grant of its own, separate from reading the tables themselves.

Resolution: Check the connection's access against the relations listed under What Each Datastore Exposes, then collect again. If access is in order, the other explanation is that the source recorded nothing to read: an account that has been quiet, or tables that have not been written since the history begins.

Only Part of the Graph Came Back

Some tables have a full upstream chain and others have nothing, with no obvious pattern.

Cause: History reaches back only as far as the source retains it, and a run observes only relationships that were exercised inside the window it read. A table written monthly leaves nothing in a window covering a week.

Resolution: Turn Collect lineage on for the scheduled Sync rather than running it once. Each run adds what it sees to what is already recorded, so the graph fills in over the weeks instead of having to be complete on the first attempt.

A Databricks Datastore Collects Less Than Expected

Collection works, but the same setup on another Databricks datastore returns noticeably more.

Cause: A datastore on hive_metastore has no recorded lineage of its own. It falls back to parsing statement text from the query history, and reads view definitions with SHOW CREATE TABLE.

Resolution: Expect a thinner graph there than on a Unity Catalog datastore, and fill the gaps from a data catalog or by hand.

Reading the Graph

Some Nodes Have a Dashed Border

A node is drawn dashed and dimmed, nothing opens when you click it, and it has no fields to expand.

Cause: Nothing is wrong. It is an asset the source named in a relationship but that is not registered in Qualytics, shown under the name the source spelled it with. Qualytics keeps the connection as long as the other side resolves to a container.

Resolution: If the asset matters, register the datastore or table that holds it and collect again. The next run replaces the external side with the container instead of adding a second connection beside it. Right-click and Copy Name to take the full name as the source spells it.

Expand All Stopped Before the End of the Chain

Expand all loaded a long stretch of the graph and then stopped, although more clearly exists.

Cause: Expand all follows a direction to its end, up to 20 steps out from the node it was clicked on. A chain longer than that is not loaded in one action.

Resolution: Click Expand all again from a node at the edge of what loaded, which starts a new count from there.

The Graph Feels Cluttered After Expanding

Nodes overlap or sit far from the ones they connect to, and the layout is hard to follow.

Cause: Each expansion adds nodes around the existing arrangement rather than recomputing it from scratch, so the layout drifts as the graph grows.

Resolution: Use the toolbar's Reorganize action to re-apply the default layout. Expanding cannot be undone, so reload the Lineage tab to get back to the starting view. See Tips & Tricks.

Changing Connections

A Connection Came Back After I Deleted It

The connection disappeared when deleted and was there again later.

Cause: Deleting removes the connection, not the thing that produces it. A data catalog connection returns on the next sync of that data catalog, a collected one returns the next time the relationship is observed, and a Qualytics managed one returns when the computed container is saved or the table is written again.

Resolution: Remove the relationship where it is produced. Only a manual connection stays deleted on its own. See Deleting Is Not Limited to Manual Connections.

A Relationship That No Longer Exists Is Still in the Graph

A pipeline was decommissioned weeks ago and its connections are still drawn.

Cause: Collected connections are never removed automatically. History can show that a relationship happened and can never show that one stopped, so a run that does not see it again proves nothing and changes nothing.

Resolution: Delete it from the Lineage tab. Since nothing will observe a relationship that has genuinely ended, it stays deleted.

Adding, Editing, or Deleting Is Refused

The node's menu offers Copy Name but no Add upstream or Add downstream, and hovering a connection's badge reveals no Delete.

Cause: Changing lineage requires the Manager role. A Member can read the whole graph, and the controls are hidden rather than shown and refused.

Resolution: Ask a Manager or an Admin to make the change. See Permissions.