Connect to Facebook Data in as an External Source in Dremio

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

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live Facebook data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with Facebook and gain immediate access to Facebook data within your data lake. By surfacing Facebook data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to Facebook 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 Facebook to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

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

JDBC Driver for Facebook

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

Connecting to Facebook

Facebook will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Facebook 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 Facebook JDBC Driver. Double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.facebook.jar

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

Most tables require user authentication as well as application authentication. Facebook uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate to Facebook, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can obtain your own by registering an app with Facebook.

See the Getting Started chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

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:facebook:RTK=5246...;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH

Access Facebook as an External Source

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

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

More Information & Free Trial

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