Add Microsoft Dataverse Data to Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog



Use the CData JDBC Driver for Microsoft Dataverse with the Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog to classify and organize data.

Informatica provides a powerful, elegant means of transporting and transforming your data. By utilizing the CData JDBC driver for Microsoft Dataverse, you are gaining access to a driver based on industry-proven standards that integrates seamlessly with Informatica's Enterprise Data Catalog. This tutorial shows how to classify and organize Microsoft Dataverse data across any environment.

About Microsoft Dataverse Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Microsoft Dataverse (formerly the Common Data Service). Customers use CData connectivity to:

  • Access both Dataverse Entities and Dataverse system tables to work with exactly the data they need.
  • Authenticate securely with Microsoft Dataverse in a variety of ways, including Azure Active Directory, Azure Managed Service Identity credentials, and Azure Service Principal using either a client secret or a certificate.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to manage Microsoft Dataverse entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

CData customers use our Dataverse connectivity solutions for a variety of reasons, whether they're looking to replicate their data into a data warehouse (alongside other data sources)or analyze live Dataverse data from their preferred data tools inside the Microsoft ecosystem (Power BI, Excel, etc.) or with external tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.).


Getting Started


Load the JDBC Driver

To load the JDBC Driver:

  1. Install the JDBC Driver on the host running Informatica. For this article, it is assumed that the driver was installed into cdata.jdbc.cds.CDSDriver.
  2. $ java -jar setup.jar
  3. Navigate to the JDBC install directory and create a zip file called genericJDBC.zip containing the driver and its license file.
  4. $ cd ~/cdata-jdbc-driver-for-cds/lib $ zip genericJDBC.zip cdata.jdbc.cds.jar cdata.jdbc.cds.lic
  5. Move the genericJDBC.zip file into the Catalog Service directory within Informatica. For this article, it is assumed that Informatica is installed into /opt/informatica. Working in this folder will probably require root permissions, so make sure to su or sudo to root before continuing.
  6. # mv genericJDBC.zip /opt/informatica/services/CatalogService/ScannerBinaries
  7. Edit the custom deployment configuration to unpack the zip file.
  8. # cd /opt/informatica/services/CatalogService/ScannerBinaries/CustomDeployer/ # nano scannerDeployer.xml

    After unpacking the existing ExecutionContextProperty nodes, add a new ExecutionContextProperty node with this content.

    <ExecutionContextProperty isLocationProperty="true" dependencyToUnpack="genericJDBC.zip"> <PropertyName>JDBCScanner_DriverLocation</PropertyName> <PropertyValue>scanner_miti/genericJDBC/Drivers</PropertyValue> </ExecutionContextProperty>
  9. Refresh the Catalog Service from the Admin console.

Configure the JDBC Resource

To configure the JDBC resource:

  1. Open the Catalog administrator and add a new JDBC resource with the following properties:
    • Driver Class: cdata.jdbc.cds.CDSDriver
    • URL: jdbc.cds:OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.crm.dynamics.com/InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;
    • You can connect without setting any connection properties for your user credentials. Below are the minimum connection properties required to connect.

      • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
      • OrganizationUrl: Set this to the organization URL you are connecting to, such as https://myorganization.crm.dynamics.com.
      • Tenant (optional): Set this if you wish to authenticate to a different tenant than your default. This is required to work with an organization not on your default Tenant.

      When you connect the Common Data Service OAuth endpoint opens in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions. The OAuth process completes automatically.

      Built-In Connection String Designer

      For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Microsoft Dataverse JDBC Driver. Either double-click the .jar file or execute the .jar file from the command-line.

      java -jar cdata.jdbc.cds.jar

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

      When you configure the JDBC URL, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

    Typical additional connection string properties follow:

    JDBC;MSTR_JDBC_JAR_FOLDER=PATH\TO\JAR\;DRIVER=cdata.jdbc.cds.CDSDriver;URL={jdbc:cds:OrganizationUrl=https://myaccount.crm.dynamics.com/};
  2. Username: user
  3. Password: password
  4. Note that the Username and Password properties are required, even if the driver you are using does not require them. In those cases, you can enter a placeholder value instead.

  5. Configure the metadata options to perform at least one source metadata scan. This scan uses the driver to determine what tables, views, and stored procedures are available through the service.
    • Source Metadata: Enable this option.
    • Catalog: Set this to the appropriate catalog for multi-catalog data sources. Otherwise, set this to CData.
    • Schema: Set this to the appropriate schema for multi-schema data sources. Otherwise, set this to the name of the service (for example, Couchbase).
    • Case-sensitivity: Generally this option should be disabled. Enable it only for data sources which are case-sensitive.
    • Import stored procedures: Enable this if you want to import stored procedure definitions in addition to tables and views.

    Other metadata scanners may be enabled as desired.

  6. Complete the driver configuration, optionally configuring custom attributes and a scanner schedule.
  7. Perform the metadata scan by navigating to the Monitoring tab and clicking Run. Depending upon the data source, this may takes a few minutes.

When the scan is complete, a summary of all of the metadata objects is displayed along with the status of the Metadata Load job. If any errors occur, you can open the Log Location link for the job to see the errors reported by Informatica or the driver.

Validate the Discovered Metadata

Open the Catalog Service browser to view the metadata extracted from the data source. Depending upon the options you selected when configuring the metadata scanner, you may see any combination of tables, views, and stored procedures for the resource you defined.

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the Microsoft Dataverse Driver to get started:

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