Analyze Lakebase Data in R via JDBC

Access Lakebase data with pure R script and standard SQL on any machine where R and Java can be installed. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for Lakebase and the RJDBC package to work with remote Lakebase data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Lakebase and visualize Lakebase data by calling standard R functions.

Install R

You can match the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running open R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open 3.2.3, which is preconfigured to install packages from the Jan. 1, 2016 snapshot of the CRAN repository. This snapshot ensures reproducibility.

Load the RJDBC Package

To use the driver, download the RJDBC package. After installing the RJDBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RJDBC)

Connect to Lakebase as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to Lakebase as a JDBC data source:

• Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.lakebase.LakebaseDriver
• Classpath: Set this to the location of the driver JAR. By default this is the lib subfolder of the installation folder.

The DBI functions, such as dbConnect and dbSendQuery, provide a unified interface for writing data access code in R. Use the following line to initialize a DBI driver that can make JDBC requests to the CData JDBC Driver for Lakebase:

driver <- JDBC(driverClass = "cdata.jdbc.lakebase.LakebaseDriver", classPath = "MyInstallationDir\lib\cdata.jdbc.lakebase.jar", identifier.quote = "'") 

You can now use DBI functions to connect to Lakebase and execute SQL queries. Initialize the JDBC connection with the dbConnect function. To connect to Databricks Lakebase, start by setting the following properties:

• DatabricksInstance: The Databricks instance or server hostname, provided in the format instance-abcdef12-3456-7890-abcd-abcdef123456.database.cloud.databricks.com.
• Server: The host name or IP address of the server hosting the Lakebase database.
• Port (optional): The port of the server hosting the Lakebase database, set to 5432 by default.
• Database (optional): The database to connect to after authenticating to the Lakebase Server, set to the authenticating user's default database by default.

OAuth Client Authentication

To authenicate using OAuth client credentials, you need to configure an OAuth client in your service principal. In short, you need to do the following:

1. Create and configure a new service principal
2. Assign permissions to the service principal
3. Create an OAuth secret for the service principal

For more information, refer to the Setting Up OAuthClient Authentication section in the Help documentation.

OAuth PKCE Authentication

To authenticate using the OAuth code type with PKCE (Proof Key for Code Exchange), set the following properties:

• AuthScheme: OAuthPKCE.
• User: The authenticating user's user ID.

For more information, refer to the Help documentation.

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Lakebase JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.lakebase.jar

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

👁 Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)

Below is a sample dbConnect call, including a typical JDBC connection string:

conn <- dbConnect(driver,"jdbc:lakebase:DatabricksInstance=lakebase;Server=127.0.0.1;Port=5432;Database=my_database;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Lakebase APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

dbListTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Lakebase API:

orders <- dbGetQuery(conn,"SELECT ShipName, ShipCity FROM Orders WHERE ShipCountry = 'USA'")

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(orders)

Plot Lakebase Data

You can now analyze Lakebase data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot(orders$ShipCity, main="Lakebase Orders", names.arg = orders$ShipName, horiz=TRUE)

👁 A basic bar plot. (Salesforce is shown.)