Connectors → Cosmos DB

About Cosmos DB

Azure Cosmos DB is a fully managed NoSQL database for modern app development. It is Microsoft's proprietary, globally distributed, multi-model database service for managing data on a global scale. It is a schema-agnostic and horizontally scalable database service as well.

Azure Cosmos DB offers multiple database APIs, which include the following:

• Core (SQL) API
• API for MongoDB
• Cassandra API
• Gremlin API
• Table API

These APIs allow your applications to treat Azure Cosmos DB as if it were other database technologies, without the overhead of management and scaling approaches.

Cosmos DB resource model

Internally, Cosmos DB stores items in containers. These two terms refer to different entities depending on the API that you use.

The following table shows the entities these two terms refer to per API:

Containers are grouped in databases, which are analogous to namespaces above containers. Containers are schema-agnostic, which means that no schema is enforced when adding items.

For more information, refer to Azure Cosmos DB resource model.

About the Cosmos DB Connector

The Cosmos DB connector is available starting with the 5.1.2 release. This connector uses the cdata.jdbc.cosmosdb.jar driver to connect to Cosmos DB items and containers and get data.

The Cosmos DB Connector utilizes the CData JDBC driver for Cosmos DB. In order to query a Cosmos DB resource using a SQL SELECT statement, the driver supports the configuration of various JDBC connection properties.

For a comprehensive reference of the connector properties, refer to CData JDBC Driver for Cosmos DB.

The Cosmos DB connector supports the following Incorta specific functionality:

Cosmos DB connector requirements

The Cosmos DB connector requires the following:

• An Account Endpoint: this is the Cosmos DB Account Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
• An Access Key: this is the primary key of the Cosmos DB account. It allows the connection to the Cosmos DB REST API to have access to the Cosmos DB resources in a particular account.

You can view your account URI and also view and manage your primary keys from within the Microsoft Azure Portal → Cosmos DB account → Settings → Keys.

For details, refer to Azure Cosmos DB Accounts and Secure access to data in Azure Cosmos DB.

The Cosmos DB connector installation

The Cosmos DB connector requires the deployment of cdata.jdbc.cosmosdb.jar file to the Incorta Node hosts of the Analytics Service and the Loader Service. A system administrator with root access to the host can deploy the JAR file. A CMC Administrator can restart the Incorta cluster.

Here are the steps to copy the JAR file to standalone Incorta cluster:

• Secure copy the cdata.jdbc.cosmosdb.jar file to the host. Here is an example using scp:

  Copy
  INCORTA_NODE_HOST=100.101.102.103
  cd ~/Downloads
  scp -i ~/.ssh/host_pemkey.pem  cdata.jdbc.cosmosdb.jar incorta@${INCORTA_NODE_HOST}:/tmp/
  
  

• Secure shell into the host

  Copy
  ssh -i ~/.ssh/host_pemkey.pem incorta@${INCORTA_NODE_HOST}
  
  

• Copy the cdata.jdbc.cosmosdb.jar to the IncortaNode/runtime/lib/ directory in bash shell

  Copy
  sudo incorta
  INCORTA_INSTALLATION_PATH=/home/incorta/IncortaAnalytics/
  
  cp /tmp/cdata.jdbc.cosmosdb.jar $INCORTA_INSTALLATION_PATH/IncortaNode/runtime/lib/cdata.jdbc.cosmosdb.jar
  
  

Here are the steps to restart the standalone Incorta cluster:

• Sign in to the Cluster Management Console (CMC) as the CMC Administrator.
• In the Navigation bar, select Clusters.
• Select the cluster name in the list.
• In Details, select Restart.

Steps to connect a Cosmos DB data source and Incorta

To connect a Cosmos DB data source and Incorta, here are the high-level steps, tools, and procedures:

• Create an external data source
• Create a schema with the Schema Wizard
• or, Create a schema with the Schema Designer
• Load the schema
• Explore the schema

Create an external data source

A Tenant Administrator (Super User), a user that belongs to a group with the SuperRole role, or a user that belongs to a group with the Schema Manager role can create an external data source for a given tenant.

Here are the steps to create an external data source with the Cosmos DB connector:

• Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
• In the Navigation bar, select Data.
• In the Action bar, select + New → Add Data.
• In the Choose a Data Source dialog, in Query Service, select Cosmos DB.
• In the New Data Source dialog, specify the applicable connector properties.
• To test, select Test Connection.
• Select Ok to save your changes.

The Cosmos DB connector properties

Here are the properties for the Cosmos DB connector:

Create a schema with the Schema Wizard

Here are the steps to create a Cosmos DB schema with the Schema Wizard:

• Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
• In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
• In the Action bar, select + New → Schema Wizard.
• In (1) Choose a Source, specify the following:
  • For Enter a name, enter the physical schema name.
  • For Select a Datasource, select the Cosmos DB data source.
  • Optionally, enter a description.
• In the Schema Wizard footer, select Next.
• In (2) Manage Tables, in the Data Panel, first select the name of the Data Source, and then check the Select All checkbox.
• In the Schema Wizard footer, select Next.
• In (3) Finalize, in the Schema Wizard footer, select Create Schema.

Create a schema with the Schema Designer

Here are the steps to create a Cosmos DB schema using the Schema Designer:

• Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
• In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
• In the Action bar, select + New → Create Schema.
• In the Create Schema dialog, in Name, specify the physical schema name, and then select Save.
• In Start adding tables to your schema, select CosmosDB.
• In the Data Source dialog, specify the Cosmos DB table data source properties.
• Select Add.
• In the Table Editor, in the Table Summary section, enter the table name.
• To save your changes, in the Action bar, select Done.

The Cosmos DB table data source properties

For a physical schema table in Incorta, you can define the following Cosmos-DB-specific data source properties as follows:

View the schema diagram with the Schema Diagram Viewer

Here are the steps to view the physical schema diagram using the Schema Diagram Viewer:

• Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
• In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
• In the list of schemas, select the Cosmos DB schema.
• In the Schema Designer, in the Action bar, select Diagram.

Load the schema

Here are the steps to perform a Full Load of the Cosmos DB schema using the Schema Designer:

• Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
• In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
• In the list of schemas, select the Cosmos DB schema.
• In the Schema Designer, in the Action bar, select Load → Load Now → Full.
• To review the load status, in Last Load Status, select the date.

Explore the schema

With the full load of the Cosmos DB schema complete, you can use the Analyzer to explore the schema, create your first insight, and save the insight to a new dashboard.

To open the Analyzer from the schema, follow these steps:

• In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
• In the Schema Manager, in the List view, select the Cosmos DB schema.
• In the Schema Designer, in the Action bar, select Explore Data.

For more information about how to use the Analyzer to create insights, see Analyzer and Visualizations.

Additional Considerations

Types of Incremental Load

You can enable incremental load for a Cosmos DB table data. There are two types of incremental extracts: Last Successful Extract Time and Maximum Value of a Column

Last Successful Extract Time

In this type, the Loader Service fetches updates since the last time the table was loaded. This is determined by the difference between the current time and the database timestamp.

Maximum Value of a Column

The column-based strategy depends on an extra column called Incremental Column in each table. The Cosmos DB connector supports both timestamp and numeric columns. A timestamp column is of the type date or timestamp. A numeric column is of the type int or long.

Incremental Load Example

In this example, the invoices table must contain a column of the type Date or Timestamp in order to load the table incrementally with a last successful extract time strategy. In this case, the name of the date column is ModifiedDate and the format of the column is Timestamp.

Here are the data source property values for this example:

• Incremental Load: enabled
• Query: SELECT * FROM invoices
• Update Query: SELECT * FROM invoices WHERE ModifiedDate > ?

• Incremental Field Type: Timestamp

Valid Query Types

When creating a query for the Cosmos DB connector, only SELECT statements are valid.