Connect to Salesforce Data as an External Source in Dremio

The CData JDBC Driver for Salesforce implements JDBC Standards and allows various applications, including Dremio, to work with live Salesforce data. Dremio is a data lakehouse platform designed to empower self-service, interactive analytics on the data lake. With the CData JDBC driver, you can include live Salesforce data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to Salesforce data from Dremio as an External Source.

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live Salesforce data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with Salesforce and gain immediate access to Salesforce data within your data lake. By surfacing Salesforce data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to Salesforce data.

Getting Started

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Prerequisites

This article assumes you are utilizing Docker to run Dremio. You can create a Docker container with the Dremio service using a command similar to the follow:

docker run -d --name dremio -p 9047:9047 -p 31010:31010 dremio/dremio-oss

Where dremio is the name of the container, 9047 is the container's port for the Dremio web interface and 31010 is the port that maps to the Dremio query service. dremio/dremio-oss specifies the image to use.

Build the ARP Connector

To use the CData JDBC Driver in Dremio, you need to build an Advanced Relation Pushdown (ARP) Connector. You can view the source code for the Connector on GitHub or download the ZIP file (GitHub.com) directly. Once you copy or extract the files, run the following command from the root directory of the connector (the directory containing the pom.xml file) to build the connector.

mvn clean install

NOTE: The CData ARP Connectors are build to be compiled with Java 11. Be sure to install Java 11 and use the correct version. You can update your Java version using a command similar to the following:

sudo update-alternatives --config java

Once the JAR file for the connector is built (in the target directory), you are ready to copy the ARP connector and JDBC Driver to your Dremio instance.

Installing the Connector and JDBC Driver

Install the ARP Connector to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/ and the JDBC Driver for Salesforce to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

docker cp PATH\TO\dremio-salesforce-plugin-{DREMIO_VERSION}.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/

JDBC Driver for Salesforce

docker cp PATH\TO\cdata.jdbc.salesforce.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/3rdparty/

Connecting to Salesforce

Salesforce will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Salesforce data. The JDBC Driver has a built-in connection string designer that you can use (see below).

👁 External Sources via CData JDBC Drivers (Amazon DynamoDB & Couchbase are shown)

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

java -jar cdata.jdbc.salesforce.jar

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

There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Salesforce: OAuth, Login (or basic), and SSO. The Login method requires you to have the username, password, and security token of the user.

OAuth Authentication (default)

The default authentication mechanism (and the one preferred by Salesforce) is OAuth. To use OAuth with CData's embedded OAuth application, leave the connection properties blank. If you have configured your own custom OAuth application with Salesforce (see the Help documentation for more information), set OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL to the properties for you application. Set InitiateOAuth to the desired OAuth flow ("GETANDREFRESH" will have the connector manage the entire OAuth flow).

Login (or Basic) Authentication

If you do not wish do not wish to use OAuth authentication, you can use Login (or basic) authentication. Set AuthScheme to Basic, and set the User, Password, and SecurityToken properties. You can configure your security token in Salesforce.

SSO (single sign-on) Authentication

SSO (single sign-on) can be used by setting the SSOProperties, SSOLoginUrl, and SSOExchangeURL connection properties, which allow you to authenticate to an identity provider. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for more information.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

If your Salesforce org has MFA enforcement enabled, set MFACode to the time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) generated by your authenticator app (such as Salesforce Authenticator or Google Authenticator). MFACode applies to both OAuth and Login authentication flows.

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

NOTE: To use the JDBC Driver in Dremio, you will need a license (full or trial) and a Runtime Key (RTK). For more information on obtaining this license (or a trial), contact our sales team.

Add the Runtime Key (RTK) to the JDBC URL. You will end up with a JDBC URL similar to the following:

jdbc:salesforce:RTK=5246...;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;MFACode=YourMFACode

Access Salesforce as an External Source

To add Salesforce as an External Source, click to add a new source and select Salesforce. Copy the JDBC URL and paste it into the New Salesforce Source wizard.

👁 Entering the JDBC URL (Amazon DynamoDB is shown)

Save the connection and you are ready to query live Salesforce data in Dremio, easily incorporating Salesforce data into your data lake.

👁 Live data in Dremio (Amazon DynamoDB is shown)

More Information & Free Trial

Using the CData JDBC Driver for Salesforce in Dremio, you can incorporate live Salesforce data into your data lake. Check out our CData JDBC Driver for Salesforce page for more information about connecting to Salesforce. Download a free, 30 day trial of the CData JDBC Driver for Salesforce and get started today.