Connect to REST Data in Airbyte ELT Pipelines

Airbyte empowers users to load your data into any data warehouse, data lake, or database. When combined with CData Connect Cloud, Airbyte users can create Extract, Load, Transform (ELT) pipelines directly from live REST data. This article illustrates the process of connecting to REST through Connect Cloud and constructing ELT pipelines for REST data within Airbyte.

CData Connect Cloud offers a dedicated SQL Server interface for REST, facilitating data querying without the need for data replication to a native database. With built-in optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect Cloud efficiently directs all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, straight to REST. This harnesses server-side processing to swiftly retrieve the desired REST data.

Configure REST Connectivity for Airbyte

Connectivity to REST from Airbyte is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with REST data from Airbyte, we start by creating and configuring a REST connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection

2. Select "REST" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to REST.

   See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models REST APIs as bidirectional database tables and XML/JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

   After setting the URI and providing any authentication values, set Format to "XML" or "JSON" and set DataModel to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

   The DataModel property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

   • Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your REST data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
   • FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
   • Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

   See the Modeling REST Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

   
4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add REST 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.

Connect to REST from Airbyte

To establish a connection from Airbyte to CData Connect Cloud, follow these steps.

1. Log in to your Airbyte account
2. On the left panel, click Sources, then Add New Source
3. Set Source Type to MSSQL Server to connect the TDS endpoint
4. Set Source Name
5. Set Host URL to tds.cdata.com
6. Set Port to 14333
7. Set Database to the name of the connection you previously configured, e.g. REST1.
8. Set Username to your Connect Cloud username
9. Set SSL Method to Encrypted (trust server certificate), leave the Replication Method as standard, and set SSH Tunnel Method to No Tunnel
10. (Optional) Set Schema to anything you want to apply to the source
11. Set Password to your Connect Cloud PAT
12. (Optional) Enter any needed JBDC URL Params
13. Click Test and Save to create the data source.

Create ELT Pipelines for REST Data

To connect REST data with a new destination, click Connections and then Set Up Connection to connect to your destination. Select the source created above and your desired destination, then allow Airbyte to process. When it is done, your connection is ready for use.

Get CData Connect Cloud

To get live data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from Airbyte, try CData Connect Cloud today!