ETL Printful in Oracle Data Integrator

Leverage existing skills by using the JDBC standard to connect to Printful: Through drop-in integration into ETL tools like Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), the CData JDBC Driver for Printful connects real-time Printful data to your data warehouse, business intelligence, and Big Data technologies.

JDBC connectivity enables you to work with Printful just as you would any other database in ODI. As with an RDBMS, you can use the driver to connect directly to the Printful APIs in real time instead of working with flat files.

This article walks through a JDBC-based ETL -- Printful to Oracle. After reverse engineering a data model of Printful entities, you will create a mapping and select a data loading strategy -- since the driver supports SQL-92, this last step can easily be accomplished by selecting the built-in SQL to SQL Loading Knowledge Module.

Install the Driver

To install the driver, copy the driver JAR (cdata.jdbc.api.jar) and .lic file (cdata.jdbc.api.lic), located in the installation folder, into the ODI appropriate directory:

• UNIX/Linux without Agent: ~/.odi/oracledi/userlib
• UNIX/Linux with Agent: ~/.odi/oracledi/userlib and $ODI_HOME/odi/agent/lib
• Windows without Agent: %APPDATA%\Roaming\odi\oracledi\userlib
• Windows with Agent: %APPDATA%\odi\oracledi\userlib and %APPDATA%\odi\agent\lib

Restart ODI to complete the installation.

Reverse Engineer a Model

Reverse engineering the model retrieves metadata about the driver's relational view of Printful data. After reverse engineering, you can query real-time Printful data and create mappings based on Printful tables.

1. In ODI, connect to your repository and click New -> Model and Topology Objects.
2. On the Model screen of the resulting dialog, enter the following information:
   • Name: Enter API.
   • Technology: Select Generic SQL (for ODI Version 12.2+, select Microsoft SQL Server).
   • Logical Schema: Enter API.
   • Context: Select Global.
3. On the Data Server screen of the resulting dialog, enter the following information:
   • Name: Enter API.
   • Driver List: Select Oracle JDBC Driver.
   • Driver: Enter cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver
   • URL: Enter the JDBC URL containing the connection string.

     Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Printful Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Printful.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Printful (see below).

     Printful API Profile Settings

     In order to authenticate to Printful, you'll need to provide your API Key. To get your API Key, first go to 'Settings' then 'Stores'. Select the Store you would like to connect to, then click the 'Add API Access' button to generate an API Key. Set the API Key in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

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

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.api.jar

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

     Below is a typical connection string:

     jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Printful.apip;ProfileSettings='APIKey=my_api_key';
4. On the Physical Schema screen, enter the following information:
   • Name: Select from the Drop Down menu.
   • Database (Catalog): Enter CData.
   • Owner (Schema): If you select a Schema for Printful, enter the Schema selected, otherwise enter API.
   • Database (Work Catalog): Enter CData.
   • Owner (Work Schema): If you select a Schema for Printful, enter the Schema selected, otherwise enter API.
5. In the opened model click Reverse Engineer to retrieve the metadata for Printful tables.

Edit and Save Printful Data

After reverse engineering you can now work with Printful data in ODI. To view Printful data, expand the Models accordion in the Designer navigator, right-click a table, and click View data.

Create an ETL Project

Follow the steps below to create an ETL from Printful. You will load Orders entities into the sample data warehouse included in the ODI Getting Started VM.

1. Open SQL Developer and connect to your Oracle database. Right-click the node for your database in the Connections pane and click new SQL Worksheet.

   Alternatively you can use SQLPlus. From a command prompt enter the following:

   sqlplus / as sysdba
2. Enter the following query to create a new target table in the sample data warehouse, which is in the ODI_DEMO schema. The following query defines a few columns that match the Orders table in Printful: CREATE TABLE ODI_DEMO.TRG_ORDERS (STORE NUMBER(20,0),Id VARCHAR2(255));
3. In ODI expand the Models accordion in the Designer navigator and double-click the Sales Administration node in the ODI_DEMO folder. The model is opened in the Model Editor.
4. Click Reverse Engineer. The TRG_ORDERS table is added to the model.
5. Right-click the Mappings node in your project and click New Mapping. Enter a name for the mapping and clear the Create Empty Dataset option. The Mapping Editor is displayed.
6. Drag the TRG_ORDERS table from the Sales Administration model onto the mapping.
7. Drag the Orders table from the Printful model onto the mapping.
8. Click the source connector point and drag to the target connector point. The Attribute Matching dialog is displayed. For this example, use the default options. The target expressions are then displayed in the properties for the target columns.
9. Open the Physical tab of the Mapping Editor and click ORDERS_AP in TARGET_GROUP.
10. In the ORDERS_AP properties, select LKM SQL to SQL (Built-In) on the Loading Knowledge Module tab.

You can then run the mapping to load Printful data into Oracle.