Configure the CData JDBC Driver for Apache Airflow in a Connection Pool in Tomcat

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Connect to Apache Airflow data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

The CData JDBC Drivers support standard JDBC interfaces to integrate with Web applications running on the JVM. This article details how to connect to Apache Airflow data from a connection pool in Tomcat.

Connect to Apache Airflow Data through a Connection Pool in Tomcat

  1. Copy the CData JAR and CData .lic file to $CATALINA_HOME/lib. The CData JAR is located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
  2. Add a definition of the resource to the context. Specify the JDBC URL here.

    Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the ApacheAirflow Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\ApacheAirflow.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for ApacheAirflow (see below).

    ApacheAirflow API Profile Settings

    Apache Airflow 3 uses JWT Bearer tokens for API authentication. You can generate a token from the Airflow web UI under Settings or via the Airflow CLI using airflow users create and the /api/v2/auth/token endpoint. Note that this profile targets Apache Airflow 3.x using the /api/v2 REST API. The legacy /api/v1 endpoint used by Airflow 2.x is not supported.

    After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

    • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
    • APIKey: Set this to your Apache Airflow JWT Bearer token.
    • Server: Set this to the base URL of your Airflow instance (e.g. http://localhost:8080).

    Built-in Connection String Designer

    For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Apache Airflow JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

    
    java -jar cdata.jdbc.api.jar
    

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

    Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)

    You can see the JDBC URL specified in the resource definition below.

    
    
    <Resource name="jdbc/api"   auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" driverClassName="cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" url="jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\ApacheAirflow.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_jwt_token;Server=http://localhost:8080';" maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="-1" />
    

    To allow a single application to access Apache Airflow data, add the code above to the context.xml in the application's META-INF directory.

    For a shared resource configuration, add the code above to the context.xml located in $CATALINA_BASE/conf. A shared resource configuration provides connectivity to Apache Airflow for all applications.

  3. Add a reference to the resource to the web.xml for the application.
    
    
      Apache Airflow data JSP
      jdbc/API
      javax.sql.DataSource
      Container
    
    
  4. Initialize connections from the connection pool:
    
    Context initContext = new InitialContext();
    Context envContext  = (Context)initContext.lookup("java:/comp/env");
    DataSource ds = (DataSource)envContext.lookup("jdbc/API");
    Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
      

More Tomcat Integration

The steps above show how to connect to Apache Airflow data in a simple connection pooling scenario. For more use cases and information, see the JNDI Datasource How-To in the Tomcat documentation.

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Apache Airflow with the API Driver

Connect to Apache Airflow