Connect to Hacker News Data 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 Hacker News 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 Hacker News data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to Hacker News data from Dremio as an External Source.

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

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

ARP Connector

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

JDBC Driver for Hacker News

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

Connecting to Hacker News

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

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

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\HackerNews.apip;AuthScheme=None

Access Hacker News as an External Source

To add Hacker News 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 Hacker News data in Dremio, easily incorporating Hacker News data into your data lake.

More Information & Free Trial

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