Query Amazon S3 Data through ODBC in Node.js

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that allows you to run JavaScript code outside of a browser. With the CData ODBC Driver for Amazon S3, you can access live Amazon S3 data from Node.js apps and scripts. In this article, we walk through installing node-odbc and the required tools to create a simple Node.js app with access to live Amazon S3 data.

With built-in optimized data processing, the CData ODBC Driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live Amazon S3 data in Node.js. When you issue complex SQL queries from Node.js to Amazon S3, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Amazon S3 and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connecting to Amazon S3 Data

If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can use the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to configure the DSN. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

To authorize Amazon S3 requests, provide the credentials for an administrator account or for an IAM user with custom permissions. Set AccessKey to the access key Id. Set SecretKey to the secret access key.

Note: You can connect as the AWS account administrator, but it is recommended to use IAM user credentials to access AWS services.

For information on obtaining the credentials and other authentication methods, refer to the Getting Started section of the Help documentation.

Building node-odbc

In order to connect to Amazon S3 through the CData ODBC Driver, you need to build node-odbc manually (after installing the required tools).

Installing the Required Tools

The following commands install the tools required to build node-odbc (note the -g parameter, which installs the tools globally).

npm i -g windows-build-tools
npm i -g node-gyp

Building node-odbc

After installing the required tools, create a directory for the Node.js app and install odbc (which builds the binary for us to use in our Node.js script).

mkdir nodeodbc
cd nodeodbc
npm i -g node

Querying Amazon S3 from Node.js

With the ODBC Driver installed, a DSN Configured, and node-odbc built, we are ready to query live Amazon S3 data from a Node.js app. The sample code below connects to a specific DSN and queries the ObjectsACL table.

myscript.js

const odbc = require('odbc');

async function queryAmazonS3() {
    const connection = await odbc.connect(`DSN=CData AmazonS3 Source`);
    const data = await connection.query('SELECT Name, OwnerId FROM ObjectsACL');
    console.log(data);
}

queryAmazonS3();

Once you write the app, use node to execute the script:

node myscript.js

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData ODBC Driver for Amazon S3 and start working with your live Amazon S3 data in Node.js. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.