Direct On-Premise Database Connections for OAC DV via RDC

March 28, 2019 | 4 minute read
Richard Williams
Senior Director, Delivery and Architecture Strategy
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Deprecation of Remote Data Connector (RDC)

Private Access Channel is now available in Oracle Analytics and is recommended by Oracle for new connections to private data sources. For connections where Private Access Channels is not yet supported, Data Gateway should be used instead of RDC.

For more information on Private Access Channel and Supported Data Sources:

Connect to Private Data Sources Through a Private Access Channel

Supported Data Sources

A-Team Chronicles Private Access Channel Series

 

* This blog was written for Remote Data Connector (RDC) which is no longer the recommended method to connect to private data sources. There are no plans to re-test this blog on the latest release of OAC. This blog will remain active for customers who are still using RDC and may benefit from it - Jay Pearson (A-Team) *

For other A-Team articles by Richard, click here

Introduction

The Remote Data Connector (RDC) allows the Oracle Analytics Cloud service to connect to on-premise data sources.

In the 5.2 release of Oracle Analytics Cloud, new functionality was added that allowed Data Visualization (DV) to connect directly to on-premise databases, via the Remote Data Connector (RDC) tool, without the need to use the repository (RPD).

This article will cover the simple steps to create the connection.

This functionality is also available for a direct connection to Essbase.  That was covered in this article.

For details on how to install, and configure the Remote Data Connector tool, with Weblogic, see this article.

Note

The direct connection option currently works with DB2, Oracle, and SQL Server only.  For other data sources, you will need to go through the RPD.

This functionality requires Oracle Analytics Cloud 5.2 or later.

This connection method does NOT require that the data source be configured in the weblogic / tomcat server, although the appropriate database drivers do need to be installed in the server.  Though this method, any supported database, that is available to the on-premise server where the web-server resides, can be connected to via DV, as long as the correct credentials are known.

Be sure to pull down the '.Pem' certificate file from the OAC instance, and save on the weblogic server.  Details in this article.

 

Creating a Direct Connection from DV

1. From the OAC console, select the hamburger menu item, select 'Data Set Management'

2. Select the 'Remote Connections' menu item, and enter the URL for the on-premise weblogic / tomcat RDC server.

The URL format will be either

http://externally_available_IP_or_hostname:port_for_http/obiee/javads

or for HTTPS connections

https://externally_available_IP_or_hostname:port_for_https/obiee/javads

In this example

3. 'Close' the Data Set Management GUI

4. Create a new Connection

5. The available database options in this first release, are for an Oracle database, SQL Server, or DB2.  In this example we will use Oracle.

6. In the connection, the host, port, user credentials and service name, are all for the on-premise database.  The remote connection configured in the previous step, has already taken care of the connection to the on-premise environment.

Be sure to check the 'Use Remote Data Connector' box, and then hit 'Save'.

If an error message is displayed, confirm the entries in the connection, and remote data connector, are correct.

7. Optionally, if this connection is to be shared with other users, go back into the connection ('inspect') and under the 'Access' section, go to the 'Users' section, and add the appropriate users.  You will need to then go back to the 'General' section, re-enter the password for the database, before being able to 'Save' the changes.

8. From DV, create a Data Set as normal, and use the newly created connection to the on-premise database.

 

Summary

This article walked through the steps to connect directly to on-premise databases, using the Weblogic / Tomcat version of the Remote Data Connector tool.

 

For other A-Team articles by Richard, click here

 

Richard Williams

Senior Director, Delivery and Architecture Strategy


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