Connect to Placid Data in Aqua Data Studio

The CData JDBC Driver for Placid integrates Placid data with wizards and analytics in IDEs like Aqua Data Studio. This article shows how to connect to Placid 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 Placid 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, Placid.
   • 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.

     Placid uses API Key authentication to control access to the API. API tokens are project-specific and can be obtained from your project settings on placid.app.

     Using API Key Authentication

     To obtain your API key, log in to placid.app, navigate to your project, open the project settings, and generate an API token from the API section. Note that each API token is scoped to a specific project.

     After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

     • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
     • APIKey: Set this to your Placid project API token.

     Example connection string:

     Profile=C:\profiles\Placid.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_project_api_token';
     

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Placid 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.

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

     jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Placid.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_project_api_token';

   👁 The JDBC data source, defined by the JAR path, driver class, and JDBC URL. (QuickBooks is shown.)
   

Query Placid Data

You can now query the tables exposed.