Create Informatica Mappings From/To a JDBC Data Source for Outlook

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Create Outlook data objects in Informatica using the standard JDBC connection process: Copy the JAR and then connect.

Informatica provides a powerful, elegant means of transporting and transforming your data. By utilizing the CData JDBC Driver for Outlook, you are gaining access to a driver based on industry-proven standards that integrates seamlessly with Informatica's powerful data transportation and manipulation features. This tutorial shows how to transfer and browse Outlook data in Informatica PowerCenter.

Deploy the Driver

To deploy the driver to the Informatica PowerCenter server, copy the CData JAR and .lic file, located in the lib subfolder in the installation directory, to the following folder: Informatica-installation-directory\services\shared\jars\thirdparty.

To work with Outlook data in the Developer tool, you will need to copy the CData JAR and .lic file, located in the lib subfolder in the installation directory, into the following folders:

  • Informatica-installation-directory\client\externaljdbcjars
  • Informatica-installation-directory\externaljdbcjars

Create the JDBC Connection

Follow the steps below to connect from Informatica Developer:

  1. In the Connection Explorer pane, right-click your domain and click Create a Connection.
  2. In the New Database Connection wizard that is displayed, enter a name and Id for the connection and in the Type menu select JDBC.
  3. In the JDBC Driver Class Name property, enter:
    cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver
  4. In the Connection String property, enter the JDBC URL, using the connection properties for Outlook.

    Using OAuth Authentication

    Microsoft Graph API uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication. You must register an application in the Microsoft Azure Portal to obtain OAuth credentials (Client ID and Client Secret).

    Obtaining OAuth Credentials

    1. Log in to the Azure Portal.
    2. Navigate to Azure Active Directory > App registrations.
    3. Click New registration to create a new application.
    4. Enter an application name and select the appropriate account types.
    5. Set the Redirect URI to your application's callback URL (e.g., http://localhost:33333 for desktop apps).
    6. Click Register to create the application.
    7. On the application overview page, copy the Application (client) ID - this is your OAuthClientId.
    8. Navigate to Certificates & secrets and create a new client secret.
    9. Copy the client secret value - this is your OAuthClientSecret.
    10. Navigate to API permissions and add the required Microsoft Graph API permissions:
      • Mail.Read - For accessing email messages
      • Contacts.Read - For accessing contacts
      • Calendars.Read - For accessing calendar events
      • Tasks.Read - For accessing To Do tasks
      • offline_access - For obtaining refresh tokens
    11. Click Grant admin consent to grant these permissions.

    Connecting with OAuth

    After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

    • AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
    • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. The CData API Profile for Outlook will automatically walk through the OAuth process in order to obtain the access token.
    • OAuthClientId: Set this to the Application (client) ID from Azure Portal.
    • OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret value from Azure Portal.
    • TenantId: Set this to your Azure AD tenant identifier (GUID or domain name like 'contoso.onmicrosoft.com').
    • CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI you specified in your app registration (e.g., http://localhost:33333 for desktop apps).

    Example connection string

    Profile=C:\profiles\Outlook.apip;AuthScheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;TenantId=your_tenant_id;CallbackUrl=http://localhost:33333;
    

    Built-in Connection String Designer

    For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Outlook JDBC Driver. Either 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.

    A typical connection string is below:

    jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Outlook.apip;AuthScheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;TenantId=your_tenant_id;CallbackUrl=http://localhost:33333;

Browse Outlook Tables

After you have added the driver JAR to the classpath and created a JDBC connection, you can now access Outlook entities in Informatica. Follow the steps below to connect to Outlook and browse Outlook tables:

  1. Connect to your repository.
  2. In the Connection Explorer, right-click the connection and click Connect.
  3. Clear the Show Default Schema Only option.

You can now browse Outlook tables in the Data Viewer: Right-click the node for the table and then click Open. On the Data Viewer view, click Run.

Create Outlook Data Objects

Follow the steps below to add Outlook tables to your project:

  1. Select tables in Outlook, then right-click a table in Outlook, and click Add to Project.
  2. In the resulting dialog, select the option to create a data object for each resource.
  3. In the Select Location dialog, select your project.

    Create a Mapping

    Follow the steps below to add the Outlook source to a mapping:

    1. In the Object Explorer, right-click your project and then click New -> Mapping.
    2. Expand the node for the Outlook connection and then drag the data object for the table onto the editor.
    3. In the dialog that appears, select the Read option.

    Follow the steps below to map Outlook columns to a flat file:

    1. In the Object Explorer, right-click your project and then click New -> Data Object.
    2. Select Flat File Data Object -> Create as Empty -> Fixed Width.
    3. In the properties for the Outlook object, select the rows you want, right-click, and then click copy. Paste the rows into the flat file properties.
    4. Drag the flat file data object onto the mapping. In the dialog that appears, select the Write option.
    5. Click and drag to connect columns.

    To transfer Outlook data, right-click in the workspace and then click Run Mapping.

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Outlook with the API Driver

Connect to Outlook