Automated Continuous NASA Replication to Amazon Redshift

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

Configure Amazon Redshift as a Replication Destination

Using CData Sync, you can replicate NASA data to Amazon Redshift. To add a replication destination, navigate to the Connections tab.

1. Click Add Connection. 👁 Add a new connection.
   
2. Select the Destinations tab and locate the Amazon Redshift connector. 👁 Configure a Destination connection to Amazon Redshift.
   
3. Click the Configure Connection icon at the end of that row to open the New Connection page. If the Configure Connection icon is not available, click the Download Connector icon to install the Amazon Redshift connector. For more information about installing new connectors, see Connections in the Help documentation.
4. To connect to Amazon Redshift, set the following connection properties:
   • Connection Name: Enter a connection name of your choice for the Amazon Redshift connection.
   • Server: Enter the host name or IP of the server that hosts the Amazon Redshift database (for example, example.us-west-2.redshift.amazonaws.com).
   • Database: Enter the name of the database that you create for your Amazon Redshift cluster.
   • AuthScheme: Select the authentication scheme.
   • User: Set this to the username you want to use to authenticate to the Server.
   • Password: Set this to the password you want to use to authenticate to the Server.
   • Port: Set this to the port of the cluster.

   You can obtain these values in the AWS Management Console:

   1. Open the Amazon Redshift console.
   2. On the Clusters page, click the name of the cluster.
   3. On the Configuration tab, obtain the properties from the Cluster Database Properties section. The connection property values will be the same as the values set in the ODBC URL.
👁 Enter the connection details.

5. Once connected, click Create & Test to create, test and save the connection.

You are now connected to Amazon Redshift and can use it as both a source and a destination.

NOTE: You can use the Label feature to add a label for a source or a destination.

👁 Add a label.

In this article, we will demonstrate how to load NASA data into Amazon Redshift and utilize it as a destination.

Configure the NASA Connection

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

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

   Using API Key Authentication

   Most NASA API endpoints (APOD, NeoWS, DONKI, TechTransfer) require a NASA API key. Register for a free key at https://api.nasa.gov. The default DEMO_KEY provides limited access (30 requests/hour, 50 requests/day); a registered key allows 1,000 requests/hour.

   The following endpoints do not require an API key and work without authentication: EONET (Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker), EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera), NASA Image and Video Library, and TechPort.

   After obtaining your API key, set the following connection properties:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
   • APIKey: Set this to your NASA API key. Use DEMO_KEY for limited testing.

   Example Connection String

   Profile=C:\profiles\NASA.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;APIKey=YOUR_NASA_API_KEY
   

   Connecting to NASA

   Once the authentication is configured, you can connect to NASA and query data from any of the available tables such as AstronomyPictureOfDay, NearEarthObjectFeed, EonetEvents, and NasaImageLibrary.

   👁 Configuring a Source connection (Salesforce is shown).
   
4. Click Connect to NASA to ensure that the connection is configured properly.
5. Click Save & Test to save the 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.

👁 Select Source and Destination connections for the replication.

Replicate Entire Tables

To replicate an entire table, navigate to the Task tab in the Job, click Add Tasks, choose the table(s) from the list of NASA tables you wish to replicate into Amazon Redshift, and click Add Tasks again.

👁 Choose entire tables to replicate (Salesforce is shown).

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 with the help of SQL queries. 👁 Configure a replication Transform.

Schedule Your Replication

Select the Overview tab in the Job, and click Configure under Schedule. You can schedule a job to run automatically by configuring it to run at specified intervals, ranging from once every 10 minutes to once every month.

👁 Schedule your job to run automatically.

Once you have configured the replication job, click Save Changes. You can configure any number of jobs to manage the replication of your NASA data to Amazon Redshift.

Run the Replication Job

Once all the required configurations are made for the job, select the NASA table you wish to replicate and click Run. After the replication completes successfully, a notification appears, showing the time taken to run the job and the number of rows replicated.

👁 Run the job.

Free Trial & More Information

Now that you have seen how to replicate NASA data into Amazon Redshift, visit our CData Sync page to explore more about CData Sync and download a free 30-day trial. Start consolidating your enterprise data today!

As always, our world-class Support Team is ready to answer any questions you may have.