Connect to Outlook Data in NetBeans

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Connect to Outlook data in NetBeans with the data source configuration wizard.

The CData JDBC Driver for Outlook integrates connectivity to live Outlook data in IDEs that support JDBC. The JDBC standard enables you to use built-in data access wizards and other tools supporting rapid development. This article shows how to connect to Outlook data in NetBeans. You will create a connection and load Outlook data in the Table Editor.

Create a JDBC Data Source for Outlook in NetBeans

To create the JDBC data source, expand the Database node in the Service window, right-click the Drivers node, and select New Driver. In the New Driver wizard that results, enter the following information:

  • Driver File(s): Click Add and, in the file explorer dialog that appears, select the cdata.jdbc.api.jar file. The driver JAR is located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
  • Driver Class: Click Find to search for the driver class inside the JAR. Then select cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver from the menu.
  • Name: Enter the name for the driver.

Define Connection Parameters

Follow the steps below to define required connection properties:

  1. In the Service window, right-click the Database node and click New Connection.

  2. In the New Connection Wizard, enter the following connection properties:

    • Driver Name: In the menu, select the CData JDBC Driver for Outlook.
    • User Name: Enter the username. This can also be defined in the JDBC URL.
    • Password: Enter the password. This can also be defined in the JDBC URL.
    • JDBC URL: Specify the JDBC URL.

      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 JDBC URL is the following:

      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;

Query Outlook Data

To connect to Outlook data, right-click the connection in the Database node and click Connect. After the connection is established, you can expand it to discover schema information.

To load a table in the Data Views window, right-click the table and then click View Data..

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Outlook with the API Driver

Connect to Outlook