Connect to Zuora Data as an External Source in Dremio

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

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

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 Zuora to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

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

JDBC Driver for Zuora

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

Connecting to Zuora

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

java -jar cdata.jdbc.zuora.jar

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

Zuora uses the OAuth standard to authenticate users. See the online Help documentation for a full OAuth authentication guide.

Configuring Tenant property

In order to create a valid connection with the provider you need to choose one of the Tenant values (USProduction by default) which matches your account configuration. The following is a list with the available options:

• USProduction: Requests sent to https://rest.zuora.com.
• USAPISandbox: Requests sent to https://rest.apisandbox.zuora.com"
• USPerformanceTest: Requests sent to https://rest.pt1.zuora.com"
• EUProduction: Requests sent to https://rest.eu.zuora.com"
• EUSandbox: Requests sent to https://rest.sandbox.eu.zuora.com"

Selecting a Zuora Service

Two Zuora services are available: Data Query and AQuA API. By default ZuoraService is set to AQuADataExport.

DataQuery

The Data Query feature enables you to export data from your Zuora tenant by performing asynchronous, read-only SQL queries. We recommend to use this service for quick lightweight SQL queries.

Limitations

• The maximum number of input records per table after filters have been applied: 1,000,000
• The maximum number of output records: 100,000
• The maximum number of simultaneous queries submitted for execution per tenant: 5
• The maximum number of queued queries submitted for execution after reaching the limitation of simultaneous queries per tenant: 10
• The maximum processing time for each query in hours: 1
• The maximum size of memory allocated to each query in GB: 2
• The maximum number of indices when using Index Join, in other words, the maximum number of records being returned by the left table based on the unique value used in the WHERE clause when using Index Join: 20,000

AQuADataExport

AQuA API export is designed to export all the records for all the objects ( tables ). AQuA query jobs have the following limitations:

Limitations

• If a query in an AQuA job is executed longer than 8 hours, this job will be killed automatically.
• The killed AQuA job can be retried three times before returned as failed.

👁 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:zuora:RTK=5246...;OAuthClientID=MyOAuthClientId;OAuthClientSecret=MyOAuthClientSecret;Tenant=USProduction;ZuoraService=DataQuery;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;

Access Zuora as an External Source

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

👁 Entering the JDBC URL (Amazon DynamoDB is shown)

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

👁 Live data in Dremio (Amazon DynamoDB is shown)

More Information & Free Trial

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