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IBM Cloud Object Storage Icon IBM Cloud Object Storage ODBC Driver

The IBM Cloud Object Storage ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from IBM Cloud Object Storage, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access IBM Cloud Object Storage data like you would a database - read, write, and update IBM Cloud Object Storage IBMCloudObject, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Connect to IBM Cloud Object Storage Data from PowerBuilder


This article demonstrates how to use the CData ODBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage to connect to IBM Cloud Object Storage data and execute queries in PowerBuilder.

The CData ODBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage can be used from any platform or development technology that supports ODBC, including PowerBuilder. This article shows how to connect to IBM Cloud Object Storage data and execute queries from the Database Painter and controls such as the DataWindow.

Connect to IBM Cloud Object Storage as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

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:

  1. Log in to your IBM Cloud account.
  2. 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:

  1. Log in to your IBM Cloud account.
  2. Navigate to the Platform API Keys page.
  3. On the middle-right corner click "Create an IBM Cloud API Key" to create a new API Key.
  4. 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.

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

Create a Profile for the ODBC Driver for IBM Cloud Object Storage

Follow the steps below to use the Database Painter tool to create a database profile based on an ODBC DSN (data source name) for IBM Cloud Object Storage. In the Database Painter, you can use wizards and the UI to work with IBM Cloud Object Storage data.

  1. In PowerBuilder, click Tools -> Database Painter.
  2. In the Objects window in the Database Painter, right-click the ODBC node and click New Profile.
  3. On the Connection tab, enter a name for the profile and select the IBM Cloud Object Storage DSN in the Data Source menu.
  4. To view and modify a table, right-click a table and then click Edit Data -> Grid.

Using IBM Cloud Object Storage Data with PowerBuilder Controls

You can use standard PowerBuilder objects to connect to ODBC data sources and execute queries. The following example shows how to retrieve IBM Cloud Object Storage data into a DataWindow. You can add the following code to the open method:

SQLCA.DBMS = "ODBC" SQLCA.DBParm = "ConnectString='DSN=CData IBMCloudObjectStorage Source'" CONNECT USING SQLCA; dw_objects.SetTransObject(SQLCA); dw_objects.Retrieve();