Connect to Twitter Data in as an External Source in Dremio

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

The CData JDBC Driver enables high-speed access to live Twitter data in Dremio. Once you install the driver, authenticate with Twitter and gain immediate access to Twitter data within your data lake. By surfacing Twitter data using native data types and handling complex filters, aggregations, & other operations automatically, the CData JDBC Driver grants seamless access to Twitter 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 Twitter to %DREMIO_HOME%/jars/3rdparty. You can use commands similar to the following:

ARP Connector

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

JDBC Driver for Twitter

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

Connecting to Twitter

Twitter will now appear as an External Source option in Dremio. The ARP Connector built uses a JDBC URL to connect to Twitter 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 Twitter JDBC Driver. Double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command line.

java -jar cdata.jdbc.twitter.jar

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

All tables require authentication. You can connect using your User and Password or OAuth. To authenticate using OAuth, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can register an app to obtain your own.

If you intend to communicate with Twitter only as the currently authenticated user, then you can obtain the OAuthAccessToken and OAuthAccessTokenSecret directly by registering an app.

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

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:twitter:RTK=5246...;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH

Access Twitter as an External Source

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

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

More Information & Free Trial

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