VOOZH about

URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/jira-cloud-polybase.rst

⇱ Connect to Jira Data as an External Data Source using PolyBase

Connect to Jira Data as an External Data Source using PolyBase

👁 Dibyendu Datta
Dibyendu Datta
Lead Technology Evangelist
Use CData Connect AI and PolyBase to create an external data source in SQL Swerver with access to live Jira data.

PolyBase for SQL Server allows you to query external data by using the same Transact-SQL syntax used to query a database table. When paired with the CData ODBC Driver for Jira, you get access to your Jira data directly alongside your SQL Server data. This article describes creating an external data source and external tables to grant access to live Jira data using T-SQL queries.

NOTE: PolyBase is only available on SQL Server 19 and above.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for Jira, allowing you to query data from Jira without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Jira, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Jira data quickly.

About Jira Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live Jira data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Gain bi-directional access to their Jira objects like issues, projects, and workflows.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to perform functional actions like changing issues status, creating custom fields, download or uploading an attachment, modifying or retrieving time tracking settings, and more.
  • Authenticate securely using a variety of methods, including username and password, OAuth, personal access token, API token, Crowd or OKTA SSO, LDAP, and more.

Most users leverage CData solutions to integrate Jira data with their database or data warehouse, whether that's using CData Sync directly or relying on CData's compatibility with platforms like SSIS or Azure Data Factory. Others are looking to get analytics and reporting on live Jira data from preferred analytics tools like Tableau and Power BI.

Learn more about how customers are seamlessly connecting to their Jira data to solve business problems from our blog: Drivers in Focus: Collaboration Tools.


Getting Started


Configure Jira Connectivity for PolyBase

Connectivity to Jira from PolyBase is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Jira data from PolyBase, we start by creating and configuring a Jira connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Jira" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Jira.

    To connect to JIRA, provide the User and Password. Additionally, provide the Url; for example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Jira Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Jira data from Polybase.

Create an External Data Source for Jira Data

After configuring the connection, you need to create a credential database for the external data source.

Creating a Credential Database

Execute the following SQL command to create credentials for the external data source connected to Jira data.

NOTE: Set IDENTITY to your Connect AI username and set SECRET to your Personal Access Token.

CREATE DATABASE SCOPED CREDENTIAL ConnectCloudCredentials
WITH IDENTITY = 'yourusername', SECRET = 'yourPAT';

Create an External Data Source for Jira

Execute a CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE SQL command to create an external data source for Jira with PolyBase: 

CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE ConnectCloudInstance
WITH ( 
 LOCATION = 'sqlserver://tds.cdata.com:14333',
 PUSHDOWN = ON,
 CREDENTIAL = ConnectCloudCredentials
);

Create External Tables for Jira

After creating the external data source, use CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE statements to link to Jira data from your SQL Server instance. The table column definitions must match those exposed by CData Connect AI. You can use the Data Explorer in Connect AI to see the table definition.

👁 Table definition in the Data Explorer (Salesforce is shown)

Sample CREATE TABLE Statement

Execute a CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE SQL command to create the external table(s), using the collation and setting the LOCATION to three-part notation for the connection, catalog, and table. The statement to create an external table based on a Jira Issues would look similar to the following.

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE Issues(
 Summary COLLATE [nvarchar](255) NULL,
 TimeSpent COLLATE [nvarchar](255) NULL,
 ...
) WITH ( 
 LOCATION='JIRA1.JIRA.Issues',
 DATA_SOURCE=ConnectCloudInstance
);

Having created external tables for Jira in your SQL Server instance, you are now able to query local and remote data simultaneously. To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your SQL Server database, try CData Connect AI today!