Atlan APIs use certain common terms and properties that are based on our product fundamentals. To help you get oriented, here are the common concepts in our API documentation. (For a deeper dive into product terminology, head over to our Product Documentation)

Key concepts

• Asset — all objects that provide context to your data, such as tables, columns, databases, BI dashboards and so on.
• Process — the transformations that link together upstream and downstream assets in lineage.
• Unique identifiers — control how Atlan creates vs updates assets.
• Type definitions — control what metadata is used to describe each different kind of asset (for example a Table vs a Column).