Access Live IBM Cloud Object Storage Data in Spring Boot

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the IBM Cloud Object Storage Driver to get started:

Learn more:

Rapidly create and deploy powerful Java applications that integrate with IBM Cloud Object Storage.

Connect to IBM Cloud Object Storage in a Spring Boot Application using CData JDBC IBM Cloud Object Storage Driver

Spring Boot is a framework that makes engineering Java web applications easier. It offers the ability to create standalone applications with minimal configuration. When paired with the CData JDBC driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage, Spring Boot can work with live IBM Cloud Object Storage data. This article shows how to configure data sources and retrieve data in your Java Spring Boot Application, using the CData JDBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage.

With built-in optimized data processing, the CData JDBC Driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live IBM Cloud Object Storage data. When you issue complex SQL queries to IBM Cloud Object Storage, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to IBM Cloud Object Storage and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations). Its built-in dynamic metadata querying allows you to work with and analyze IBM Cloud Object Storage data using native data types.

Creating the Spring Boot Project in Java

In an IDE (in this tutorial, we use IntelliJ), choose a Maven project: In the generated project, go to the pom.xml file, and add the required dependencies for Spring Boot:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>2.7.2</version>
<relativePath/>
</parent>
<groupId>com.example</groupId>
<artifactId>demo</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<name>demo</name>
<description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
<properties>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>
<build>
<plugins>
	<plugin>
		<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
	</plugin>

	<plugin>
		<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
		<artifactId>maven-install-plugin</artifactId>
		<version>2.5.1</version>
		<executions>
			<execution>
				<id>id.install-file</id>
				<phase>clean</phase>
				<goals>
					<goal>install-file</goal>
				</goals>
				<configuration>
					<file>C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage ####\lib\cdata.jdbc.ibmcloudobjectstorage.jar</file>
					<groupId>org.cdata.connectors</groupId>
					<artifactId>cdata-ibmcloudobjectstorage-connector</artifactId>
					<version>21</version>
					<packaging>jar</packaging>
				</configuration>
			</execution>
		</executions>
	</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>

<dependencies>
<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jdbc</artifactId>
	<version>2.7.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
	<groupId>org.cdata.connectors</groupId>
	<artifactId>cdata-ibmcloudobjectstorage-connector</artifactId>
	<version>21</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
	<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>



<distributionManagement>
<repository>
	<uniqueVersion>false</uniqueVersion>
	<id>test</id>
	<name>My Repository</name>
	<url>scp://repo/maven2</url>
	<layout>default</layout>
</repository>
</distributionManagement>

</project>

Project Structure

In the java directory, create a new package. Usually the name of the package is the name of the groupId (com.example) followed by the artifactId (.MDS).

Make sure that the "java" directory is the sources root; this is indicated with a blue color. You may need to right click the java directory and select Mark Directory -> Sources Root. Also, the resources directory should be marked as Resources Root.

Database Connection Properties

In the application.properties file, we set the configuration properties for the IBM Cloud Object Storage JDBC Driver, using the Class name and JDBC URL:


	spring.datasource.driver=cdata.jdbc.ibmcloudobjectstorage.IBMCloudObjectStorageDriver
	spring.datasource.url=jdbc:ibmcloudobjectstorage:ApiKey=myApiKey;CloudObjectStorageCRN=MyInstanceCRN;Region=myRegion;OAuthClientId=MyOAuthClientId;OAuthClientSecret=myOAuthClientSecret;

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the IBM Cloud Object Storage JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.


java -jar cdata.jdbc.ibmcloudobjectstorage.jar

Register a New Instance of Cloud Object Storage

If you do not already have Cloud Object Storage in your IBM Cloud account, follow the procedure below to install an instance of SQL Query in your account:

Log in to your IBM Cloud account.
Navigate to the page, choose a name for your instance and click Create. You will be redirected to the instance of Cloud Object Storage you just created.

Connecting using OAuth Authentication

There are certain connection properties you need to set before you can connect. You can obtain these as follows:

API Key

To connect with IBM Cloud Object Storage, you need an API Key. You can obtain this as follows:

Log in to your IBM Cloud account.
Navigate to the Platform API Keys page.
On the middle-right corner click "Create an IBM Cloud API Key" to create a new API Key.
In the pop-up window, specify the API Key name and click "Create". Note the API Key as you can never access it again from the dashboard.

Cloud Object Storage CRN

If you have multiple accounts, you will need to specify the CloudObjectStorageCRN explicitly. To find the appropriate value, you can:

Query the Services view. This will list your IBM Cloud Object Storage instances along with the CRN for each.
Locate the CRN directly in IBM Cloud. To do so, navigate to your IBM Cloud Dashboard. In the Resource List, Under Storage, select your Cloud Object Storage resource to get its CRN.

Connecting to Data

You can now set the following to connect to data:

InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
ApiKey: Set this to your API key which was noted during setup.
CloudObjectStorageCRN (Optional): Set this to the cloud object storage CRN you want to work with. While the connector attempts to retrieve this automatically, specifying this explicitly is recommended if you have more than Cloud Object Storage account.

When you connect, the connector completes the OAuth process.

Extracts the access token and authenticates requests.
Saves OAuth values in OAuthSettingsLocation to be persisted across connections.

Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)

After setting the properties in the application.properties file, we now configure them.

Data Source Configuration

First, we mark the IBM Cloud Object Storage data source as our primary data source. Then, we create a Data Source Bean.

Create a DriverManagerDataSource.java file and create a Bean within it, as shown below. If @Bean gives an error, Spring Boot may not have loaded properly. To fix this, go to File -> Invalidate Caches and restart. Additionally, make sure that Maven has added the Spring Boot dependencies.

To create a data source bean, we use DriverManagerDataSource Class. This class allows us to set the properties of the data source. The following code shows the bean definition of our data source. Each driver should have a bean.


import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.jdbc.DataSourceBuilder;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Primary;
import org.springframework.core.env.Environment;
import javax.sql.DataSource;

public class DriverManagerDataSource{
	@Autowired
	private static Environment env;

	@Bean(name ="IBMCloudObjectStorage")
	@Primary
	public static DataSource IBMCloudObjectStorageDataSource()
	{

	DataSourceBuilder<?> dataSourceBuilder = DataSourceBuilder.create();
		dataSourceBuilder.driverClassName("cdata.jdbc.ibmcloudobjectstorage.IBMCloudObjectStorageDriver");
		dataSourceBuilder.url("jdbc:ibmcloudobjectstorage:ApiKey=myApiKey;CloudObjectStorageCRN=MyInstanceCRN;Region=myRegion;OAuthClientId=MyOAuthClientId;OAuthClientSecret=myOAuthClientSecret;");
		return dataSourceBuilder.build();
	}
	
	//@Override
	public void setEnvironment( final Environment environment) {
	env=environment;
	}
}

Next, move the IBM Cloud Object Storage jar file to the Documents folder (see path in command below). Then, click the Maven icon (top right corner of IntelliJ) and click "Execute Maven Goal." Now, run the following command: mvn install:install-file -Dfile=C:\Program Files\CData\CData JDBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage ####\lib\cdata.jdbc.ibmcloudobjectstorage.jar -DgroupId=cdata.jdbc.ibmcloudobjectstorage -DartifactId=cdata-ibmcloudobjectstorage-connector -Dversion=21 -Dpackaging=jar

After pressing enter, we see the following output:

Testing the Connection

The last step is testing the connection. We call the data source in the main method of MDSApplication.java:


import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jdbc.DataSourceAutoConfiguration;
import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import static com.example.demo.DriverManagerDataSources.IBMCloudObjectStorageDataSource;


@SpringBootApplication(exclude = {DataSourceAutoConfiguration.class})
	public class MDSApplication {
		//remove the comment on the line below
		public static void main (){
		SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
		Connection conn = IBMCloudObjectStorageDataSource().getConnection();
		System.out.println("Catalog: "+ conn.getCatalog());
	}
}

The output generated should look like this:

Free Trial & More Information

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData JDBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage and start working with your live IBM Cloud Object Storage in Spring Boot

CData Software is a leading provider of data access and connectivity solutions. Our standards-based connectors streamline data access and insulate customers from the complexities of integrating with on-premise or cloud databases, SaaS, APIs, NoSQL, and Big Data.

Connect With Us

Get Started

Data Connectors

ETL/ ELT Solutions

Cloud & API Connectivity

OEM & Custom Drivers