Connect to Neo4J Data in as an External Source in Dremio

The CData JDBC Driver for Neo4J implements JDBC Standards and allows various applications, including Dremio, to work with live Neo4J 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 Neo4J data as a part of your enterprise data lake. This article describes how to connect to Neo4J data from Dremio as an External Source.

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live Neo4J data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with Neo4J and gain immediate access to Neo4J data within your data lake. By surfacing Neo4J data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to Neo4J data.

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

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 Neo4J to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

docker cp PATH\TO\dremio-neo4j-plugin-20.0.0.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/

JDBC Driver for Neo4J

docker cp PATH\TO\cdata.jdbc.neo4j.jar dremio_image_name:/opt/dremio/jars/3rdparty/

Connecting to Neo4J

Neo4J will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Neo4J data. The JDBC Driver has a built-in connection string designer that you can use (see below).

Built-in Connection String Designer

For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Neo4J JDBC Driver. Double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.neo4j.jar

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

To connect to Neo4j, set the following connection properties:

• Server: The server hosting the Neo4j instance.
• Port: The port on which the Neo4j service is running. The provider connects to port 7474 by default.
• User: The username of the user using the Neo4j instance.
• Password: The password of the user using the Neo4j instance.

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:neo4j:RTK=5246...;Server=localhost;Port=7474;User=my_user;Password=my_password;

Access Neo4J as an External Source

To add Neo4J as an External Source, click to add a new source and select Neo4j. Copy the JDBC URL and paste it into the New Neo4j Source wizard.

Save the connection and you are ready to query live Neo4J data in Dremio, easily incorporating Neo4J data into your data lake.

More Information & Free Trial

Using the CData JDBC Driver for Neo4J in Dremio, you can incorporate live Neo4J data into your data lake. Check out our CData JDBC Driver for Neo4J page for more information about connecting to Neo4J. Download a free, 30 day trial of the CData JDBC Driver for Neo4J and get started today.