Automated Continuous IBM Cloud Object Storage Replication to Microsoft Access

Always-on applications rely on automatic failover capabilities and real-time data access. CData Sync integrates live IBM Cloud Object Storage data into your Microsoft Access instance, allowing you to consolidate all of your data into a single location for archiving, reporting, analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and more.

Configure Microsoft Access as a Replication Destination

Using CData Sync, you can replicate IBM Cloud Object Storage data to Microsoft Access. To add a replication destination, navigate to the Connections tab.

1. Click Add Connection.
2. Select Microsoft Access as a destination.
3. Enter the necessary connection properties. To connect to Microsoft Access, set the following:
   • Data Source: The path to the Access database. The application must have read/write permissions to the database.
   • Provider: The OLEDB Provider. For MS Office 2007 and above, use Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0.

   Windows Edition

   Connecting to Access as a destination requires the Microsoft Access Database Engine, which can be downloaded from here.

   Be sure to download the correct bitness of the driver as 64bit MS Office only works with the 64bit driver. If using 32bit MS Office, you will need to host DataSync in IIS and enable 32-bit applications. This can be set in the "Advanced Settings" for you Application Pool. Refer to Configuration in IIS for more information on hosting DataSync in IIS.

4. Click Test Connection to ensure that the connection is configured properly.
5. Click Save Changes.

Configure the IBM Cloud Object Storage Connection

You can configure a connection to IBM Cloud Object Storage from the Connections tab. To add a connection to your IBM Cloud Object Storage account, navigate to the Connections tab.

1. Click Add Connection.
2. Select a source (IBM Cloud Object Storage).
3. Configure the connection properties.
   
   

   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.
4. Click Connect to ensure that the connection is configured properly.
5. Click Save Changes.

Configure Replication Queries

CData Sync enables you to control replication with a point-and-click interface and with SQL queries. For each replication you wish to configure, navigate to the Jobs tab and click Add Job. Select the Source and Destination for your replication.

Replicate Entire Tables

To replicate an entire table, click Add Tables in the Tables section, choose the table(s) you wish to replicate, and click Add Selected Tables.

Customize Your Replication

You can use the Columns and Query tabs of a task to customize your replication. The Columns tab allows you to specify which columns to replicate, rename the columns at the destination, and even perform operations on the source data before replicating. The Query tab allows you to add filters, grouping, and sorting to the replication.

Schedule Your Replication

In the Schedule section, you can schedule a job to run automatically, configuring the job to run after specified intervals ranging from once every 10 minutes to once every month.

Once you have configured the replication job, click Save Changes. You can configure any number of jobs to manage the replication of your IBM Cloud Object Storage data to Microsoft Access.