Connect to Hacker News Data in Aqua Data Studio

The CData JDBC Driver for Hacker News integrates Hacker News data with wizards and analytics in IDEs like Aqua Data Studio. This article shows how to connect to Hacker News data through the connection manager and execute queries.

Create a JDBC Data Source

You can use the connection manager to define connection properties and save them in a new JDBC data source. The Hacker News data source can then be accessed from Aqua Data Studio tools.

1. In Aqua Data Studio, select Register Server from the Servers menu.
2. In the Register Server form, select the 'Generic - JDBC' connection.
3. Enter the following JDBC connection properties:
   • Name: Enter a name for the data source; for example, Hacker News.
   • Driver Location: Click the Browse button and select the cdata.jdbc.api.jar file, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
   • Driver: Enter the Driver's class name, cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver.

   • URL: Enter the JDBC URL, which starts with jdbc:api: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

     Connecting to HackerNews

     The HackerNews API (powered by Firebase) is a public API that requires no authentication. You can connect and query data immediately without any credentials.

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

     • AuthScheme: Set this to None.

     Example connection string:

     Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None
     

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Hacker News 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.

     A typical JDBC URL is below:

     jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None

   

Query Hacker News Data

You can now query the tables exposed.