Connect to Microsoft Dataverse Data as an External Source in Dremio



Use the CData JDBC Driver to connect to Microsoft Dataverse as an External Source in Dremio.

The CData JDBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse implements JDBC Standards and allows various applications, including Dremio, to work with live Microsoft Dataverse data. Dremio is a data lakehouse platform designed to empower self-service, interactive analytics on the data lake. With the CData JDBC driver, you can include live Microsoft Dataverse data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to Microsoft Dataverse data from Dremio as an External Source.

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live Microsoft Dataverse data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with Microsoft Dataverse and gain immediate access to Microsoft Dataverse data within your data lake. By surfacing Microsoft Dataverse data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to Microsoft Dataverse data.

About Microsoft Dataverse Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Microsoft Dataverse (formerly the Common Data Service). Customers use CData connectivity to:

  • Access both Dataverse Entities and Dataverse system tables to work with exactly the data they need.
  • Authenticate securely with Microsoft Dataverse in a variety of ways, including Azure Active Directory, Azure Managed Service Identity credentials, and Azure Service Principal using either a client secret or a certificate.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to manage Microsoft Dataverse entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

CData customers use our Dataverse connectivity solutions for a variety of reasons, whether they're looking to replicate their data into a data warehouse (alongside other data sources)or analyze live Dataverse data from their preferred data tools inside the Microsoft ecosystem (Power BI, Excel, etc.) or with external tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.).


Getting Started


Prerequisites

This article assumes you are utilizing Docker to run Dremio. You can create a Docker container with the Dremio service using a command similar to the follow:

docker run -d --name dremio -p 9047:9047 -p 31010:31010 dremio/dremio-oss

Where dremio is the name of the container, 9047 is the container's port for the Dremio web interface and 31010 is the port that maps to the Dremio query service. dremio/dremio-oss specifies the image to use.

Build the ARP Connector

To use the CData JDBC Driver in Dremio, you need to build an Advanced Relation Pushdown (ARP) Connector. You can view the source code for the Connector on GitHub or download the ZIP file (GitHub.com) directly. Once you copy or extract the files, run the following command from the root directory of the connector (the directory containing the pom.xml file) to build the connector.

mvn clean install

NOTE: The CData ARP Connectors are build to be compiled with Java 11. Be sure to install Java 11 and use the correct version. You can update your Java version using a command similar to the following:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

Once the JAR file for the connector is built (in the target directory), you are ready to copy the ARP connector and JDBC Driver to your Dremio instance.

Installing the Connector and JDBC Driver

Install the ARP Connector to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/ and the JDBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

docker cp PATH\TO\dremio-cds-plugin-{DREMIO_VERSION}.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/

JDBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse

docker cp PATH\TO\cdata.jdbc.cds.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/3rdparty/

Connecting to Microsoft Dataverse

Microsoft Dataverse will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Microsoft Dataverse data. The JDBC Driver has a built-in connection string designer that you can use (see below).

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Microsoft Dataverse JDBC Driver. Double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.cds.jar

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

You can connect without setting any connection properties for your user credentials. Below are the minimum connection properties required to connect.

  • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
  • OrganizationUrl: Set this to the organization URL you are connecting to, such as https://myorganization.crm.dynamics.com.
  • Tenant (optional): Set this if you wish to authenticate to a different tenant than your default. This is required to work with an organization not on your default Tenant.

When you connect the Common Data Service OAuth endpoint opens in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions. The OAuth process completes automatically.

NOTE: To use the JDBC Driver in Dremio, you will need a license (full or trial) and a Runtime Key (RTK). For more information on obtaining this license (or a trial), contact our sales team.

Add the Runtime Key (RTK) to the JDBC URL. You will end up with a JDBC URL similar to the following:

jdbc:cds:RTK=5246...;OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.crm.dynamics.com/InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH

Access Microsoft Dataverse as an External Source

To add Microsoft Dataverse as an External Source, click to add a new source and select CDS. Copy the JDBC URL and paste it into the New CDS Source wizard.

Save the connection and you are ready to query live Microsoft Dataverse data in Dremio, easily incorporating Microsoft Dataverse data into your data lake.

More Information & Free Trial

Using the CData JDBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse in Dremio, you can incorporate live Microsoft Dataverse data into your data lake. Check out our CData JDBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse page for more information about connecting to Microsoft Dataverse. Download a free, 30 day trial of the CData JDBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse and get started today.

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