Connect to Airtable Data in DigitalSuite Studio through RunMyProcess DSEC

The CData JDBC Driver for Airtable implements JDBC Standards and enables a applications ranging from BI to IDE to connect with Airtable. In this article, we describe how to connect to Airtable data from Arkobi Digital RunMyProcess's DSEC and connect to Airtable in RunMyProcess.

Setting up EnterpriseConnect Agent

Configure the EnterpriseConnect Agent following the EnterpriseConnect page in the RunMyProcess documentation.

Setting up JDBC Adapter

The JDBC Adapter section describes the steps to connect to RDBMS through JDBC. Follow the steps and open the JDBC.config file.

1. Create a JSON entry for the CData JDBC Driver for Airtable, e.g. Airtable = { "sqlDriver" : "...", "sqlSource" : "...", "sqlDriverPath" : "..." }
2. Set the "sqlDriver" field to the Class name for the CData JDBC Driver, e.g.
   cdata.jdbc.airtable.AirtableDriver
3. Set the "sqlSource" field to a JDBC URL for connecting to Airtable, e.g.
   jdbc:airtable:APIKey=keymz3adb53RqsU;BaseId=appxxN2fe34r3rjdG7;TableNames=Table1,...;ViewNames=Table1.View1,...;

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Airtable JDBC Driver. Either 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.
4. Set the "sqlDriverPath" field to the name of the CData JDBC Driver JAR file, e.g.
   cdata.jdbc.airtable.jar

Sample JDBC.config File

Put the JDBC driver JAR file (cdata.jdbc.airtable.jar) into the same directory as unified-adapter-[version].jar.

Note: Make sure to put the CData license file (cdata.jdbc.airtable.lic) into the same directory. Since the license is generated based on the unique identifier of the machine where the product in installed, you will need an offline activation if you want to put the file on another machine.

Starting DigitalSuite EnterpriseConnect Agent

In Windows, start RunMyProcess DigitalSuite EnterpriseConnect Agent in Windows services. To start the application through command line, see Starting the EnterpriseConnect Agent in the RunMyProcess documents.

Starting the JDBC Adapter

Start the JDBC Adapter from runAdapter.bat. Once the Adapter is running, you can access the application through the agent address (e.g. 127.0.0.1:8080). Below is an example executing the command in Windows.

Once the DigitalSuite EnterpriseConnect Agent and JDBC Adapter are running, access http://localhost:(specified-port-number)/ through your browser to open the page shown below.

Check the availability of the JDBC Adapter using tools such as Postman or cURL. Here, we use Postman to send the HTTP POST request.

Configure the RequestHeader as follows:

Configure the RequestBody as follows:

If the JDBC.config file contains credential information, sqlUsername and sqlPassword can be left empty. If you are not sure of the table name, you can retrieve the list of tables using the request SELECT * FROM sys_tables

The request is successful if the Status is 200 and the Body contains Airtable data in JSON format.

Connect to Airtable through DSEC Agent in DigitalSuite Studio

Create a DigitalSuite Studio project and then create a Provider in the project.

• URL: The URL for accessing JDBC Agent (e.g. http:localhost:8080/)
• Authentication Scheme: Login/password
• Login: The value from agent.user in the application.properties file
• Password: agent.password in the application.properties file
• Secured: Checked
• Use DigitalSuite EnterpriseConnect: Checked
• With domain: The value from agent.domain in application.properties file

Next, create a Connector in the Provider.

• Connector URL: Leave this empty
• Architecture: REST/XML-RPC
• Method: POST
• Result format: JSON
• Accept media type: application/json
• Character set: Automatic
• Content: Same as the Request body used in the JDBC Adapter
• Content type: application/json

The JSON data we used as the Request body in JDBC Adapter:

{ "protocol":"JDBC", "data":{ "DBType":"Airtable", "sqlUsername":"", "sqlPassword":"", "sqlStatement":"SELECT * FROM SampleTable_1" } }

Open Launch Test to perform the test. The test is successful if Airtable data is shown in Result on the right pane.

Now you can use Airtable data in RunMyProcess DigitalSuite Studio through DSEC.

For the detailed information on supported SQL commands, refer to the SQL Compliance section in our help documentation. For information on tables, refer to the Data Model section.