Connect to Live Jira Service Desk Data in PostGresSQL Interface through CData Connect Cloud

There are a vast number of PostgreSQL clients available on the Internet. PostgreSQL is a popular interface for data access. When you pair PostgreSQL with CData Connect Cloud, you gain database-like access to live Jira Service Desk data from PostgreSQL. In this article, we walk through the process of connecting to Jira Service Desk data in Connect Cloud and establishing a connection between Connect Cloud and PostgreSQL using a TDS foreign data wrapper (FDW).

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL Server interface for Jira Service Desk, allowing you to query data from Jira Service Desk without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Jira Service Desk, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Jira Service Desk data quickly.

Connect to Jira Service Desk in Connect Cloud

CData Connect Cloud uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "Jira Service Desk" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Jira Service Desk.

   You can establish a connection to any Jira Service Desk Cloud account or Server instance.

   Connecting with a Cloud Account

   To connect to a Cloud account, you'll first need to retrieve an APIToken. To generate one, log in to your Atlassian account and navigate to API tokens > Create API token. The generated token will be displayed.

   Supply the following to connect to data:

   • User: Set this to the username of the authenticating user.
   • APIToken: Set this to the API token found previously.

   Connecting with a Service Account

   To authenticate with a service account, you will need to supply the following connection properties:

   • User: Set this to the username of the authenticating user.
   • Password: Set this to the password of the authenticating user.
   • URL: Set this to the URL associated with your JIRA Service Desk endpoint. For example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.

   Note: Password has been deprecated for connecting to a Cloud Account and is now used only to connect to a Server Instance.

   Accessing Custom Fields

   By default, the connector only surfaces system fields. To access the custom fields for Issues, set IncludeCustomFields.

4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Jira Service Desk Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

Build the TDS Foreign Data Wrapper

The Foreign Data Wrapper can be installed as an extension to PostgreSQL, without recompiling PostgreSQL. The tds_fdw extension is used as an example (https://github.com/tds-fdw/tds_fdw).

1. You can clone and build the git repository via something like the following view source: sudo apt-get install git git clone https://github.com/tds-fdw/tds_fdw.git cd tds_fdw make USE_PGXS=1 sudo make USE_PGXS=1 install Note: If you have several PostgreSQL versions and you do not want to build for the default one, first locate where the binary for pg_config is, take note of the full path, and then append PG_CONFIG= after USE_PGXS=1 at the make commands.
2. After you finish the installation, then start the server: sudo service postgresql start
3. Then go inside the Postgres database psql -h localhost -U postgres -d postgres Note: Instead of localhost you can put the IP where your PostgreSQL is hosted.

Connect to Jira Service Desk data as a PostgreSQL Database and query the data!

After you have installed the extension, follow the steps below to start executing queries to Jira Service Desk data:

1. Log into your database.
2. Load the extension for the database: CREATE EXTENSION tds_fdw;
3. Create a server object for Jira Service Desk data: CREATE SERVER "JiraServiceDesk1" FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER tds_fdw OPTIONS (servername'tds.cdata.com', port '14333', database 'JiraServiceDesk1');
4. Configure user mapping with your email and Personal Access Token from your Connect Cloud account: CREATE USER MAPPING for postgres SERVER "JiraServiceDesk1" OPTIONS (username 'username@cdata.com', password 'your_personal_access_token' );
5. Create the local schema: CREATE SCHEMA "JiraServiceDesk1";
6. Create a foreign table in your local database: #Using a table_name definition: CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "JiraServiceDesk1".Requests ( id varchar, ReporterName varchar) SERVER "JiraServiceDesk1" OPTIONS(table_name 'JiraServiceDesk.Requests', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all'); #Or using a schema_name and table_name definition: CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "JiraServiceDesk1".Requests ( id varchar, ReporterName varchar) SERVER "JiraServiceDesk1" OPTIONS (schema_name 'JiraServiceDesk', table_name 'Requests', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all'); #Or using a query definition: CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "JiraServiceDesk1".Requests ( id varchar, ReporterName varchar) SERVER "JiraServiceDesk1" OPTIONS (query 'SELECT * FROM JiraServiceDesk.Requests', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all'); #Or setting a remote column name: CREATE FOREIGN TABLE "JiraServiceDesk1".Requests ( id varchar, col2 varchar OPTIONS (column_name 'ReporterName')) SERVER "JiraServiceDesk1" OPTIONS (schema_name 'JiraServiceDesk', table_name 'Requests', row_estimate_method 'showplan_all');
7. You can now execute read/write commands to Jira Service Desk: SELECT id, ReporterName FROM "JiraServiceDesk1".Requests;

More Information & Free Trial

Now, you have created a simple query from live Jira Service Desk data. For more information on connecting to Jira Service Desk (and more than 100 other data sources), visit the Connect Cloud page. Sign up for a free trial and start working with live Jira Service Desk data in PostgreSQL.