Connect to Workday Data in as an External Source in Dremio

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

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

ARP Connector

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

JDBC Driver for Workday

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

Connecting to Workday

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

java -jar cdata.jdbc.workday.jar

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

To connect, there are three pieces of information required: Authentication, API URL, and WSDL URL.

Authentication

To authenticate, specify your User and Password. Note that you must append your Tenant to your User separated by an '@' character. For instance, if you normally log in with 'geraldg' and your Tenant is 'mycompany_mc1', then your User should be specified as 'geraldg@mycompany_mc1'.

API URL

The API URL may be specified either directly via APIURL, or it may be constructed from the Tenant, Service, and Host. The APIURL is constructed in the following format: <Host>/ccx/service/<Tenant>/<Service>.

WSDL URL

The WSDLURL may be specified in its entirety, or may be constructed from the Service and WSDLVersion connection properties. The WSDLURL is constructed in the following format: https://community.workday.com/sites/default/files/file-hosting/productionapi/<Service>/<WSDLVersion>/<Service>.wsdl

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:workday:RTK=5246...;User=myuser;Password=mypassword;Tenant=mycompany_gm1;Host=https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com

Access Workday as an External Source

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

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

More Information & Free Trial

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