MCP
Overview
Section titled “Overview”MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a standardized way to connect LLMs to tools that give it the ability to interact with external systems.
Core concepts
Section titled “Core concepts”MCP server
Section titled “MCP server”Service that exposes tools through standardized protocol interfaces. A server can contain multiple tools.
Functions that your LLM can actively call, and decides when to use them based on user requests. Tools can write to databases, call external APIs, modify files, or trigger other logic.
MCP client
Section titled “MCP client”Instantiated by host application like Claude Desktop, VS Code, Azure Copilot studio to communicate with particular MCP servers. A Client can connect to multiple MCP servers.
Types of MCP server
Section titled “Types of MCP server”Alation provides two types of MCP server:
- Alation-hosted MCP Server (Remote): A fully managed MCP server hosted by Alation, isolated per tenant. This is the easiest way to get started with MCP.
- Self-Hosted MCP server (Local): You can also choose to host the Alation MCP server on your machine or on infrastructure. This option provides more control and customization but requires you to manage the server setup and maintenance.
Getting started with Alation-hosted MCP server
Section titled “Getting started with Alation-hosted MCP server”The MCP server is hosted and available at https://company-name.alationcloud.com/ai/mcp, where company-name is your Alation tenant name.
To connect to it, discover and use the tools, you need a MCP-compliant client like ChatGPT Web, Claude Desktop, VS Code, or Azure Copilot Studio.
Instructions on how to set these up are provided in their respective documentation.