How to create Apache Airflow federated tables in MySQL

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use the SQL Gateway and the ODBC Driver to set up federated tables for Apache Airflow data in MySQL .

You can use the SQL Gateway to configure a MySQL remoting service and set up federated tables for Apache Airflow data. The service is a daemon process that provides a MySQL interface to the CData ODBC Driver for Apache Airflow: After you have started the service, you can create a server and tables using the FEDERATED Storage Engine in MySQL. You can then work with Apache Airflow data just as you would local MySQL tables.

Connect to Apache Airflow Data

If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can use the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to configure the DSN. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

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).

Configure the SQL Gateway

See the SQL Gateway Overview to set up connectivity to Apache Airflow data as a virtual MySQL database. You will configure a MySQL remoting service that listens for MySQL requests from clients. The service can be configured in the SQL Gateway UI.

Creating a MySQL Remoting Service in SQL Gateway (Salesforce is shown)

Create a FEDERATED Server and Tables for Apache Airflow Data

After you have configured and started the service, create a FEDERATED server to simplify the process of creating FEDERATED tables:

Create a FEDERATED Server

The following statement will create a FEDERATED server based on the ODBC Driver for Apache Airflow. Note that the username and password of the FEDERATED server must match a user account you defined on the Users tab of the SQL Gateway.

CREATE SERVER fedAPI
FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER mysql
OPTIONS (USER 'sql_gateway_user', PASSWORD 'sql_gateway_passwd', HOST 'sql_gateway_host', PORT ####, DATABASE 'CData API Sys');

Create a FEDERATED Table

To create a FEDERATED table using our newly created server, use the CONNECTION keyword and pass the name of the FEDERATED server and the remote table (DagRuns). Refer to the following template for the statement to create a FEDERATED table:

CREATE TABLE fed_dagruns (
  ...,
  dagrunid  TYPE(LEN),
  state  TYPE(LEN),
  ...,
)
ENGINE=FEDERATED
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='fedAPI/dagruns';

NOTE: The table schema for the FEDERATED table must match the remote table schema exactly. You can always connect directly to the MySQL remoting service using any MySQL client and run a SHOW CREATE TABLE query to get the table schema.

Execute Queries

You can now execute queries to the Apache Airflow FEDERATED tables from any tool that can connect to MySQL, which is particularly useful if you need to JOIN data from a local table with data from Apache Airflow. Refer to the following example:

SELECT 
  fed_dagruns.dagrunid, 
  local_table.custom_field 
FROM 
  local_table 
JOIN 
  fed_dagruns 
ON 
  local_table.foreign_dagrunid = fed_dagruns.dagrunid;

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Apache Airflow with the API Driver

Connect to Apache Airflow