Connect to Facebook Data in Aqua Data Studio

The CData JDBC Driver for Facebook integrates Facebook data with wizards and analytics in IDEs like Aqua Data Studio. This article shows how to connect to Facebook data through the connection manager and execute queries.

Create a JDBC Data Source

You can use the connection manager to define connection properties and save them in a new JDBC data source. The Facebook data source can then be accessed from Aqua Data Studio tools.

1. In Aqua Data Studio, select Register Server from the Servers menu.
2. In the Register Server form, select the 'Generic - JDBC' connection.
3. Enter the following JDBC connection properties:
   • Name: Enter a name for the data source; for example, Facebook.
   • Driver Location: Click the Browse button and select the cdata.jdbc.facebook.jar file, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
   • Driver: Enter the Driver's class name, cdata.jdbc.facebook.FacebookDriver.

   • URL: Enter the JDBC URL, which starts with jdbc:facebook: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

     Most tables require user authentication as well as application authentication. Facebook uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate to Facebook, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can obtain your own by registering an app with Facebook.

     See the Getting Started chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

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

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.facebook.jar

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

     A typical JDBC URL is below:
     jdbc:facebook:InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH

Query Facebook Data

You can now query the tables exposed.