Automated Continuous REST Replication to SQL Server

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

Configure SQL Server as a Replication Destination

Using CData Sync, you can replicate REST data to SQL Server. To add a replication destination, navigate to the Connections tab.

1. Click Add Connection.
2. Select SQL Server as a destination.
3. Enter the necessary connection properties. To connect to SQL Server, set the following:
   • Server: The name or network address of the computer running SQL Server.
   • User: The username provided for authentication with SQL Server, if using forms authentication.
   • Password: The password provided for authentication with SQL Server, if using forms authentication.
   • Database: The name of the SQL Server database.

   Java Edition

   The Java version requires the Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. Copy the JDBC driver to the lib folder of your Java Web server to make a connection.

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

Configure the REST Connection

You can configure a connection to REST from the Connections tab. To add a connection to your REST account, navigate to the Connections tab.

1. Click Add Connection.
2. Select a source (REST).
3. Configure the connection properties.
   
   

   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 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 REST data to SQL Server.