How to connect PolyBase to Adobe Experience Manager

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 Experience Manager, you get access to your Adobe Experience Manager data directly alongside your SQL Server data. This article describes creating an external data source and external tables to grant access to live Adobe Experience Manager data using T-SQL queries.

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

The CData ODBC drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live Adobe Experience Manager data using PolyBase due to optimized data processing built into the driver. When you issue complex SQL queries from SQL Server to Adobe Experience Manager, the driver pushes down supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Adobe Experience Manager and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations (often SQL functions and JOIN operations) client-side. And with PolyBase, you can also join SQL Server data with Adobe Experience Manager data, using a single query to pull data from distributed sources.

Connect to Adobe Experience Manager

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs. To create an external data source in SQL Server using PolyBase, configure a System DSN (CData Adobe Experience Manager Sys is created automatically).

The driver connects to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) instances that expose the JCR repository over WebDAV. It supports both on-premises AEM and AEM as a Cloud Service deployments.

To establish a connection, set the following properties:

• URL: The WebDAV-enabled JCR server URL.
  • AEM as a Cloud Service: https://author-pXXXXX-eXXXXX.adobeaemcloud.com/crx/server
  • Local development: http://localhost:4502/crx/server
• User: Your AEM username.
• Password: Your AEM password.

Note: Tables are dynamically generated based on the JCR repository structure. Ensure that the configured user has sufficient permissions to access the required content paths in the AEM repository.

Click "Test Connection" to ensure that the DSN is connected to Adobe Experience Manager properly. Navigate to the Tables tab to review the table definitions for Adobe Experience Manager.

Create an External Data Source for Adobe Experience Manager Data

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

Creating a Master Encryption Key

Execute the following SQL command to create a new master key, 'ENCRYPTION,' to encrypt the credentials for the external data source.

CREATE MASTER KEY ENCRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'password';

Creating a Credential Database

Execute the following SQL command to create credentials for the external data source connected to Adobe Experience Manager data.

NOTE: IDENTITY and SECRET correspond with the User and Password properties for Adobe Experience Manager.

CREATE DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL adobeexperiencemanager_creds
WITH IDENTITY = 'adobeexperiencemanager_username', SECRET = 'adobeexperiencemanager_password';

Create an External Data Source for Adobe Experience Manager

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

• Set the LOCATION parameter , using the DSN and credentials configured earlier.

For Adobe Experience Manager, set SERVERNAME to the URL or address for your server (e.g. 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1' for local servers; the remote URL for remote servers). Leave PORT empty. PUSHDOWN is set to ON by default, meaning the ODBC Driver can leverage server-side processing for complex queries.

CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE cdata_adobeexperiencemanager_source
WITH ( 
  LOCATION = 'odbc://SERVER_URL',
  CONNECTION_OPTIONS = 'DSN=CData Adobe Experience Manager Sys',
  -- PUSHDOWN = ON | OFF,
  CREDENTIAL = adobeexperiencemanager_creds
);

Create External Tables for Adobe Experience Manager

After creating the external data source, use CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE statements to link to Adobe Experience Manager data from your SQL Server instance. The table column definitions must match those exposed by the CData ODBC Driver for Adobe Experience Manager. You can refer to the Tables tab of the DSN Configuration Wizard to see the table definition.

Sample CREATE TABLE Statement

The statement to create an external table based on a Adobe Experience Manager Content would look similar to the following:

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE Content(
  Id [nvarchar](255) NULL,
  Name [nvarchar](255) NULL,
  ...
) WITH ( 
  LOCATION='Content',
  DATA_SOURCE=cdata_adobeexperiencemanager_source
);

Having created external tables for Adobe Experience Manager in your SQL Server instance, you are now able to query local and remote data simultaneously. Thanks to built-in query processing in the CData ODBC Driver, you know that as much query processing as possible is being pushed to Adobe Experience Manager, freeing up local resources and computing power. Download a free, 30-day trial of the ODBC Driver for Adobe Experience Manager and start working with live Adobe Experience Manager data alongside your SQL Server data today.