Connect to Stack Exchange Data in Aqua Data Studio

The CData JDBC Driver for Stack Exchange integrates Stack Exchange data with wizards and analytics in IDEs like Aqua Data Studio. This article shows how to connect to Stack Exchange data through the connection manager and execute queries.

Create a JDBC Data Source

You can use the connection manager to define connection properties and save them in a new JDBC data source. The Stack Exchange data source can then be accessed from Aqua Data Studio tools.

1. In Aqua Data Studio, select Register Server from the Servers menu.
2. In the Register Server form, select the 'Generic - JDBC' connection.
3. Enter the following JDBC connection properties:
   • Name: Enter a name for the data source; for example, Stack Exchange.
   • Driver Location: Click the Browse button and select the cdata.jdbc.api.jar file, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
   • Driver: Enter the Driver's class name, cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver.

   • URL: Enter the JDBC URL, which starts with jdbc:api: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

     Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Stack Exchange Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\StackExchange.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Stack Exchange (see below).

     Stack Exchange API Profile Settings

     Register an application on StackApps to obtain an API Key. The Site property specifies which Stack Exchange site to query (e.g., stackoverflow).

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Stack Exchange 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 below:

     jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\StackExchange.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;Site=stackoverflow';

   

Query Stack Exchange Data

You can now query the tables exposed.