Connect to Drift Data in as an External Source in Dremio

The CData API Driver for JDBC implements JDBC Standards and allows various applications, including Dremio, to work with live Drift 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 Drift data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to Drift data from Dremio as an External Source.

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

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

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 Drift to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

docker cp PATH\TO\dremio-api-plugin-20.0.0.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/

JDBC Driver for Drift

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

Connecting to Drift

Drift will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Drift 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 Drift JDBC Driver. 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.

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

Drift API Profile Settings

Drift uses OAuth-based authentication.

You must first register an application here: https://dev.drift.com. Your app will be assigned a client ID and a client secret. Set these in your connection string via the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret properties. More information on setting up an OAuth application can be found at https://devdocs.drift.com/docs/.

After setting the following options in the ProfileSettings connection property, you are ready to connect:

• AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
• OAuthClientId: Set this to the Client Id that is specified in your app settings.
• OAuthClientSecret: Set this to Client Secret that is specified in your app settings.
• CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI you specified in your app settings.
• InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage the process to obtain the OAuthAccessToken.

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:api:RTK=5246...;Profile=C:\profiles\Drift.apip;Authscheme=OAuth;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackUrl=your_callback_url;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH

Access Drift as an External Source

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

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

More Information & Free Trial

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