Connect to Workday Data as an External Source in Dremio

The CData JDBC Driver for Workday implements JDBC Standards and allows various applications, including Dremio, to work with live Workday 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 Workday data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to Workday data from Dremio as an External Source.

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live Workday data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with Workday and gain immediate access to Workday data within your data lake. By surfacing Workday data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to Workday 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 Workday to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

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

JDBC Driver for Workday

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

Connecting to Workday

Workday will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Workday 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 Workday JDBC Driver. Double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.workday.jar

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

To connect to Workday, users need to find the Tenant and BaseURL and then select their API type.

Obtaining the BaseURL and Tenant

To obtain the BaseURL and Tenant properties, log into Workday and search for "View API Clients." On this screen, you'll find the Workday REST API Endpoint, a URL that includes both the BaseURL and Tenant.

The format of the REST API Endpoint is: https://domain.com/subdirectories/mycompany, where:

• https://domain.com/subdirectories/ is the BaseURL.
• mycompany (the portion of the url after the very last slash) is the Tenant.

For example, in the REST API endpoint https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com/ccx/api/v1/mycompany, the BaseURL is https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com and the Tenant is mycompany.

Using ConnectionType to Select the API

The value you use for the ConnectionType property determines which Workday API you use. See our Community Article for more information on Workday connectivity options and best practices.

Authentication

Your method of authentication depends on which API you are using.

• WQL, Reports as a Service, REST: Use OAuth authentication.
• SOAP: Use Basic or OAuth authentication.

See the Help documentation for more information on configuring OAuth with Workday.

👁 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:workday:RTK=5246...;User=myuser;Password=mypassword;Tenant=mycompany_gm1;BaseURL=https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com;ConnectionType=WQL;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;

Access Workday as an External Source

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

👁 Entering the JDBC URL (Amazon DynamoDB is shown)

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

👁 Live data in Dremio (Amazon DynamoDB is shown)

More Information & Free Trial

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