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Grouping multiple data sources into a single OData endpoint with Progress DataDirect Cloud
You probably already know that DataDirect Cloud allows you to retrieve information from a variety of data sources
using OData.
You may even be using these data sources to pull data into your enterprise applications.
But did you know that you can now group multiple DataDirect Cloud OData-enabled sources into a single
endpoint? That’s right, you can create a Data Source Group in DataDirect Cloud that consolidates OData entities
into one single schema.
To do this, you need at least two data sources that are OData enabled. The video “Configuring a Progress
DataDirect Cloud data source for use with the OData API” explains how to enable OData access.
Using your existing data sources, you can create a Data Source Group that combines the data sources. For
example, say you have Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and Progress Open Edge. The Oracle database contains
Sales Information, the Progress OpenEdge database contains Customer Information, and the SQL Server
database contains Employee Records. If the same object name is used across multiple source, such as Customer,
don’t worry we got that covered. You will assign a prefix to each source that will make it easily to identify their
entities. Once a Data Source Group is established, you can use it to bring data into an applications, such as with
Salesforce using Salesforce Lightning Connect.
To get started, go to the Data Sources view and click Data Source Groups.
Click the New Group button, if this is your first Group Source it is in the center of the pane. When you have an
existing Data Source Group they are listed here. There is no limit to the number of groups you can create.
A data source group must have a unique name. You can enter a description to further help identify the group, but
that is optional.
DataDirect Cloud creates each entity name by concatenating the data source prefix, which you’ll will supply later,
and each exposed data source object or table name, separated with an underscore. The default Maximum Length
is 30 characters, anything over that number will be truncated. If this process causes a duplicate name to be formed,
DataDirect Cloud will automatically append a number to make them unique. To avoid this you can change the
length value, if you have long object or table names.
The value of 1 indicates that Data Source Caching is enabled. This improves performance when multiple OData
queries are submitted to a data source because a connection does not need to be created with every query.
However, if you change any connection parameters, those changes will not be applied until a new session. You will
want to turn this off when configuring the data source, but leave it on otherwise, for performance. DataDirect Cloud
discards a session after 5 minutes of inactivity.
The OData Access URI is the endpoint you will use to connect to the data source group.
In the OData Data Sources section, select the data sources that you want to include in the group. In this case,
select Oracle as the source and enter the Prefix of Sale. Then select SQL Server and enter Emp. Do the same for
OpenEdge setting the Prefix to Cust. Remember that these prefixes will be used in conjunction with the exposed
objects to form the unique entity names in the schema. So, if different data sources have a common object name
the prefix helps to distinguish them.
Now copy the OData Access URI and Save and Close the data source group.
This OData URI provides an OData endpoint to the exposed entities in this data source group.
A Salesforce developer account, allows you to access External Data Sources using Lightning Connect OData 2.0.
This saves you time and money, as you can now map any of the exposed objects (from the three data sources)
making them available to a variety of Salesforce tools, including the Salesforce1 app, SOSL and SOQL queries,
and Salesforce APIs.
Now that you know about Data Source Groups, try making one of your own.
If you have any questions, post them in the Community Forum.
Check out other user assistance videos to learn more about DatatDirect Cloud. As always, thanks for watching!
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