Connect to Paylocity Data in as an External Source in Dremio

The CData JDBC Driver for Paylocity implements JDBC Standards and allows various applications, including Dremio, to work with live Paylocity 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 Paylocity data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to Paylocity data from Dremio as an External Source.

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live Paylocity data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with Paylocity and gain immediate access to Paylocity data within your data lake. By surfacing Paylocity data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to Paylocity 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 Paylocity to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

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

JDBC Driver for Paylocity

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

Connecting to Paylocity

Paylocity will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Paylocity 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 Paylocity JDBC Driver. Double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.paylocity.jar

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

Set the following to establish a connection to Paylocity:

• RSAPublicKey: Set this to the RSA Key associated with your Paylocity, if the RSA Encryption is enabled in the Paylocity account.

  This property is required for executing Insert and Update statements, and it is not required if the feature is disabled.

• UseSandbox: Set to true if you are using sandbox account.
• CustomFieldsCategory: Set this to the Customfields category. This is required when IncludeCustomFields is set to true. The default value for this property is PayrollAndHR.
• Key: The AES symmetric key(base 64 encoded) encrypted with the Paylocity Public Key. It is the key used to encrypt the content.

  Paylocity will decrypt the AES key using RSA decryption.
  It is an optional property if the IV value not provided, The driver will generate a key internally.

• IV: The AES IV (base 64 encoded) used when encrypting the content. It is an optional property if the Key value not provided, The driver will generate an IV internally.

Connect Using OAuth Authentication

You must use OAuth to authenticate with Paylocity. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Paylocity using the browser. For more information, refer to the OAuth section in the Help documentation.

The Pay Entry API

The Pay Entry API is completely separate from the rest of the Paylocity API. It uses a separate Client ID and Secret, and must be explicitly requested from Paylocity for access to be granted for an account. The Pay Entry API allows you to automatically submit payroll information for individual employees, and little else. Due to the extremely limited nature of what is offered by the Pay Entry API, we have elected not to give it a separate schema, but it may be enabled via the UsePayEntryAPI connection property.

Please be aware that when setting UsePayEntryAPI to true, you may only use the CreatePayEntryImportBatch & MergePayEntryImportBatchgtable stored procedures, the InputTimeEntry table, and the OAuth stored procedures. Attempts to use other features of the product will result in an error. You must also store your OAuthAccessToken separately, which often means setting a different OAuthSettingsLocation when using this connection property.

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:paylocity:RTK=5246...;OAuthClientID=YourClientId;OAuthClientSecret=YourClientSecret;RSAPublicKey=YourRSAPubKey;Key=YourKey;IV=YourIV;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH

Access Paylocity as an External Source

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

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

More Information & Free Trial

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