Connect to SQL Analysis Services Data in as an External Source in Dremio

The CData JDBC Driver for SQL Analysis Services implements JDBC Standards and allows various applications, including Dremio, to work with live SQL Analysis Services data. Dremio is a data lakehouse platform designed to empower self-service, interactive analytics on the data lake. With the CData JDBC Driver, you can include live SQL Analysis Services data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to SQL Analysis Services data from Dremio as an External Source.

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live SQL Analysis Services data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with SQL Analysis Services and gain immediate access to SQL Analysis Services data within your data lake. By surfacing SQL Analysis Services data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to SQL Analysis Services data.

Build the ARP Connector

To use the CData JDBC Driver in Dremio, you need to build an Advanced Relation Pushdown (ARP) Connector. You can view the source code for the Connector on GitHub or download the ZIP file (GitHub.com) directly. Once you copy or extract the files, run the following command from the root directory of the connector (the directory containing the pom.xml file) to build the connector.

mvn clean install

Once the JAR file for the connector is built (in the target directory), you are ready to copy the ARP connector and JDBC Driver to your Dremio instance.

Installing the Connector and JDBC Driver

Install the ARP Connector to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/ and the JDBC Driver for SQL Analysis Services to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

docker cp PATH\TO\dremio-ssas-plugin-20.0.0.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/

JDBC Driver for SQL Analysis Services

docker cp PATH\TO\cdata.jdbc.ssas.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/3rdparty/

Connecting to SQL Analysis Services

SQL Analysis Services will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to SQL Analysis Services data. The JDBC Driver has a built-in connection string designer that you can use (see below).

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the SQL Analysis Services JDBC Driver. Double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.ssas.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

To connect, provide authentication and set the Url property to a valid SQL Server Analysis Services endpoint. You can connect to SQL Server Analysis Services instances hosted over HTTP with XMLA access. See the Microsoft documentation to configure HTTP access to SQL Server Analysis Services.

To secure connections and authenticate, set the corresponding connection properties, below. The data provider supports the major authentication schemes, including HTTP and Windows, as well as SSL/TLS.

• HTTP Authentication

  Set AuthScheme to "Basic" or "Digest" and set User and Password. Specify other authentication values in CustomHeaders.

• Windows (NTLM)

  Set the Windows User and Password and set AuthScheme to "NTLM".

• Kerberos and Kerberos Delegation

  To authenticate with Kerberos, set AuthScheme to NEGOTIATE. To use Kerberos delegation, set AuthScheme to KERBEROSDELEGATION. If needed, provide the User, Password, and KerberosSPN. By default, the data provider attempts to communicate with the SPN at the specified Url.

• SSL/TLS:

  By default, the data provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats.

You can then access any cube as a relational table: When you connect the data provider retrieves SSAS metadata and dynamically updates the table schemas. Instead of retrieving metadata every connection, you can set the CacheLocation property to automatically cache to a simple file-based store.

See the Getting Started section of the CData documentation, under Retrieving Analysis Services Data, to execute SQL-92 queries to the cubes.

NOTE: To use the JDBC Driver in Dremio, you will need a license (full or trial) and a Runtime Key (RTK). For more information on obtaining this license (or a trial), contact our sales team.

Add the Runtime Key (RTK) to the JDBC URL. You will end up with a JDBC URL similar to the following:

jdbc:ssas:RTK=5246...;User=myuseraccount;Password=mypassword;URL=http://localhost/OLAP/msmdpump.dll;

Access SQL Analysis Services as an External Source

To add SQL Analysis Services as an External Source, click to add a new source and select SSAS. Copy the JDBC URL and paste it into the New SSAS Source wizard.

Save the connection and you are ready to query live SQL Analysis Services data in Dremio, easily incorporating SQL Analysis Services data into your data lake.

More Information & Free Trial

Using the CData JDBC Driver for SQL Analysis Services in Dremio, you can incorporate live SQL Analysis Services data into your data lake. Check out our CData JDBC Driver for SQL Analysis Services page for more information about connecting to SQL Analysis Services. Download a free, 30 day trial of the CData JDBC Driver for SQL Analysis Services and get started today.