Connect to Adobe Commerce 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 Adobe Commerce, you get access to your Adobe Commerce data directly alongside your SQL Server data. This article describes creating an external data source and external tables to grant access to live Adobe Commerce 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 Adobe Commerce, allowing you to query data from Adobe Commerce 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 Adobe Commerce, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Adobe Commerce data quickly.

Configure Adobe Commerce Connectivity for PolyBase

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

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

   Adobe Commerce uses the OAuth 1 authentication standard. To connect to the Adobe Commerce REST API, you will need to obtain values for the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties by registering an app with your Adobe Commerce system. See the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the OAuth values and connecting.

   You will also need to provide the URL to your Adobe Commerce system. The URL depends on whether you are using the Adobe Commerce REST API as a customer or administrator.

   • Customer: To use Adobe Commerce as a customer, make sure you have created a customer account in the Adobe Commerce homepage. To do so, click Account -> Register. You can then set the URL connection property to the endpoint of your Adobe Commerce system.

   • Administrator: To access Adobe Commerce as an administrator, set CustomAdminPath instead. This value can be obtained in the Advanced settings in the Admin menu, which can be accessed by selecting System -> Configuration -> Advanced -> Admin -> Admin Base URL.

     If the Use Custom Admin Path setting on this page is set to YES, the value is inside the Custom Admin Path text box; otherwise, set the CustomAdminPath connection property to the default value, which is "admin".

4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Adobe Commerce 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 Adobe Commerce 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 Adobe Commerce 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 Adobe Commerce

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

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

Create External Tables for Adobe Commerce

After creating the external data source, use CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE statements to link to Adobe Commerce 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 Adobe Commerce Products would look similar to the following.

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE Products(
  Name COLLATE [nvarchar](255) NULL,
  Price COLLATE [nvarchar](255) NULL,
  ...
) WITH ( 
  LOCATION='Adobe Commerce1.Adobe Commerce.Products',
  DATA_SOURCE=ConnectCloudInstance
);

Having created external tables for Adobe Commerce 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!