Connect to Active Directory Data as an External Data Source using PolyBase

PolyBase for SQL Server allows you to query external data by using the same Transact-SQL syntax used to query a database table. When paired with the CData ODBC Driver for Active Directory, you get access to your Active Directory data directly alongside your SQL Server data. This article describes creating an external data source and external tables to grant access to live Active Directory data using T-SQL queries.

NOTE: PolyBase is only available on SQL Server 19 and above, and only for Standard SQL Server.

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL Server interface for Active Directory, allowing you to query data from Active Directory without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Active Directory, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Active Directory data quickly.

Configure Active Directory Connectivity for PolyBase

Connectivity to Active Directory from PolyBase is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Active Directory data from PolyBase, we start by creating and configuring a Active Directory connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "Active Directory" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Active Directory.

   To establish a connection, set the following properties:

   • Valid User and Password credentials (e.g., Domain\BobF or cn=Bob F,ou=Employees,dc=Domain).
   • Server information, including the IP or host name of the Server, as well as the Port.

   • BaseDN: This will limit the scope of LDAP searches to the height of the distinguished name provided.

     Note: Specifying a narrow BaseDN may greatly increase performance; for example, cn=users,dc=domain will only return results contained within cn=users and its children.

4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Active Directory Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

Create an External Data Source for Active Directory Data

After configuring the connection, you need to create a credential database for the external data source.

Creating a Credential Database

Execute the following SQL command to create credentials for the external data source connected to Active Directory data.

NOTE: Set IDENTITY to your Connect Cloud username and set SECRET to your Personal Access Token.

CREATE DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL ConnectCloudCredentials
WITH IDENTITY = 'yourusername', SECRET = 'yourPAT';

Create an External Data Source for Active Directory

Execute a CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE SQL command to create an external data source for Active Directory with PolyBase:

CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE ConnectCloudInstance
WITH ( 
  LOCATION = 'sqlserver://tds.cdata.com:14333',
  PUSHDOWN = ON,
  CREDENTIAL = ConnectCloudCredentials
);

Create External Tables for Active Directory

After creating the external data source, use CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE statements to link to Active Directory data from your SQL Server instance. The table column definitions must match those exposed by CData Connect Cloud. You can use the Data Explorer in Connect Cloud to see the table definition.

Sample CREATE TABLE Statement

Execute a CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE SQL command to create the external table(s), using the collation and setting the LOCATION to three-part notation for the connection, catalog, and table. The statement to create an external table based on a Active Directory User would look similar to the following.

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE User(
  Id COLLATE [nvarchar](255) NULL,
  LogonCount COLLATE [nvarchar](255) NULL,
  ...
) WITH ( 
  LOCATION='ActiveDirectory1.ActiveDirectory.User',
  DATA_SOURCE=ConnectCloudInstance
);

Having created external tables for Active Directory in your SQL Server instance, you are now able to query local and remote data simultaneously. To get live data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your SQL Server database, try CData Connect Cloud today!