Connect to Airtable Data in as an External Source in Dremio

The CData JDBC Driver for Airtable implements JDBC Standards and allows various applications, including Dremio, to work with live Airtable data. Dremio is a data lakehouse platform designed to empower self-service, interactive analytics on the data lake. With the CData JDBC Driver, you can include live Airtable data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to Airtable data from Dremio as an External Source.

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live Airtable data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with Airtable and gain immediate access to Airtable data within your data lake. By surfacing Airtable data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to Airtable data.

Build the ARP Connector

To use the CData JDBC Driver in Dremio, you need to build an Advanced Relation Pushdown (ARP) Connector. You can view the source code for the Connector on GitHub or download the ZIP file (GitHub.com) directly. Once you copy or extract the files, run the following command from the root directory of the connector (the directory containing the pom.xml file) to build the connector.

mvn clean install

Once the JAR file for the connector is built (in the target directory), you are ready to copy the ARP connector and JDBC Driver to your Dremio instance.

Installing the Connector and JDBC Driver

Install the ARP Connector to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/ and the JDBC Driver for Airtable to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

docker cp PATH\TO\dremio-airtable-plugin-20.0.0.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/

JDBC Driver for Airtable

docker cp PATH\TO\cdata.jdbc.airtable.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/3rdparty/

Connecting to Airtable

Airtable will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Airtable data. The JDBC Driver has a built-in connection string designer that you can use (see below).

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Airtable JDBC Driver. Double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.airtable.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

APIKey, BaseId and TableNames parameters are required to connect to Airtable. ViewNames is an optional parameter where views of the tables may be specified.

• APIKey : API Key of your account. To obtain this value, after logging in go to Account. In API section click Generate API key.
• BaseId : Id of your base. To obtain this value, it is in the same section as the APIKey. Click on Airtable API, or navigate to https://airtable.com/api and select a base. In the introduction section you can find "The ID of this base is appxxN2ftedc0nEG7."
• TableNames : A comma separated list of table names for the selected base. These are the same names of tables as found in the UI.
• ViewNames : A comma separated list of views in the format of (table.view) names. These are the same names of the views as found in the UI.

NOTE: To use the JDBC Driver in Dremio, you will need a license (full or trial) and a Runtime Key (RTK). For more information on obtaining this license (or a trial), contact our sales team.

Add the Runtime Key (RTK) to the JDBC URL. You will end up with a JDBC URL similar to the following:

jdbc:airtable:RTK=5246...;APIKey=keymz3adb53RqsU;BaseId=appxxN2fe34r3rjdG7;TableNames=Table1,...;ViewNames=Table1.View1,...;

Access Airtable as an External Source

To add Airtable as an External Source, click to add a new source and select Airtable. Copy the JDBC URL and paste it into the New Airtable Source wizard.

Save the connection and you are ready to query live Airtable data in Dremio, easily incorporating Airtable data into your data lake.

More Information & Free Trial

Using the CData JDBC Driver for Airtable in Dremio, you can incorporate live Airtable data into your data lake. Check out our CData JDBC Driver for Airtable page for more information about connecting to Airtable. Download a free, 30 day trial of the CData JDBC Driver for Airtable and get started today.