Locations for File-based Connections

The following locations can be designated for file-based connections, such as Access, Excel, CSV, JSON, QVX, TDE, and XML:

JedoxFiles

With Browse you can select a file from Jedox Designer; with Open file location you can make changes directly in Designer.

Note that you can only connect to Designer when it is in the same instance as the current Jedox Integrator.

See also Reachability of files for Integrator operations.

FileSystem

Files on the system of the server can be called from the following locations:

  • an absolute path on the file system of the server. Example: C:/Users/xyz/Sample.xlsx
  • a network drive (see instructions in article Accessing Network Files). Example: //net1/Sample.json
  • a relative path to the “data” directory of the Jedox Integrator installation:
    Windows (default): /tomcat/webapps/etlserver/data/files
    Linux (default): /tomcat-etl/webapps/etlserver/data/files

See also Restricting Access to FileSystem Directories.

FTP

The supported protocol for files on an FTP server (File Transfer Protocol) is FTPS (FTP with SSL/TSL) in explicit mode. FTP can run in active or passive mode. In the active mode, clients get the incoming data connections from the server on port M. Passive mode can be used in situations where the client is behind a firewall and cannot accept incoming TCP connections.

File name is the URL of an FTP request that has a result in the corresponding file format (csv, xlsx, json, or xml). Format:

ftp://[<user>[:<password>]@]<host>[:<port>]/<url-path>

Examples:
ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/INDEX
ftp://user001:secretpassword@private.ftp-servers.example.com/mydirectory/myfile.txt

SSL mode Off: SSL is not used.

Trust: SSL certificate will be imported to the keystore if not yet available.

Verify: SSL certificate is verified.

Note: if the certificate has not been imported correctly, the following error message occurs: “Unable to find valid certification path to requested target”.
User name The username for the FTP request.
Password The password for the FTP request.
Active mode FTP is active. Note that active mode is not supported in Jedox Cloud. If you plan to upgrade to Jedox Cloud, see Migrating FTP connections from Jedox On-Prem below.

Notes:

  • Current FTPS implementation does not allow for the reuse of TLS-session ID between control and data channel, which is forced by some servers for security reasons. This requirement has to be disabled on the FTPS server installation.

  • SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) is not supported. FTPS with implicit mode of invoking security is not supported.

Migrating FTP connections from Jedox On-Prem

When migrating an FTP location from an on-prem Jedox setup that has active mode checked, uncheck active mode and make sure the FTP server you want to connect to is configured to support passive mode. If the FTP server is behind a firewall, this might require configuring a dedicated port range in the FTP server, which must be configured on the firewall as well.

For private FTP servers (which require a dedicated VPN configuration in Cloud Console), in addition to routing to port 21, separate routes for each port in the configured range must be created as well. Select the number of ports in the configured port range, depending on your needs for parallel access.

If the FTP location is only used in a single standard execution, a single extra port (in addition to 21) might be enough. If you read / write from / to the FTP location in parallel, make sure to open enough ports to avoid blocking.

HTTP

Files from a remote server using the HTTP protocol.

Filename is the URL of an HTTP request that has a result in the corresponding file format (csv, xlsx, json, or xml).
Example: http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-hist.xml

For this connection, only Basic Authentication is allowed. Other types of authentication, e.g Windows Authentication aren't supported. User name and password are those required for basic HTTP authentication.

If an HTTPS request is used, then the SSL certificate will be automatically imported into the keystore.

SSL mode Off: SSL is not used.

Trust: SSL certificate will be imported to the keystore if not yet available.

Verify: SSL certificate is verified.

Note: if the certificate has not been imported correctly, the following error message occurs: “Unable to find valid certification path to requested target”.

OneDrive

OneDrive for Business is an integral part of Office 365 or SharePoint Server and provides a place in the cloud where you can store, share, and sync your work files.

Prerequisites:

  • Office 365 business account.
  • OneDrive business subscription (Free edition is not supported)

Note: Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) is not supported.

The following parameters are required:

Azure application ID The application ID in Azure Active Directory (also called App-ID or Client-ID)
User name The username for access to OneDrive.
Password The password for access to OneDrive.
Use token connection: Allows the connection to be authenticated with an OAuth2 token. The endpoint in OAuthToken connection should be configured this way:

Note: if the Use token connection checkbox is selected, all other input fields (Azure Application ID, User Name, and Password) can remain empty.

To connect to One Drive from Jedox, you must create an application (app) in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). This can be done from one of these Microsoft links: https://portal.azure.com or https://apps.dev.microsoft.com. The application type must be client-native. For the access of One Drive, the required delegated permissions for the API "Microsoft Graph" have to be assigned to this app. In the registered app, the permissions have to be granted to each account, either by the individual user for their own account or by an administrator of the application for all users. For more information see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/active-directory-integrating-applications.

WebDAV

To access files on a server that provides WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) support, enter the following parameters:

SSL mode Off: SSL is not used.

Trust: SSL certificate will be imported to the keystore if not yet available.

Verify: SSL certificate is verified.

Note: if the certificate has not been imported correctly, the following error message occurs: “Unable to find valid certification path to requested target”.
User name The username to access the WebDAV file server.
Password The password to access the WebDAV file server.

WebHDFS

Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is a core component of Apache Hadoop, a framework for distributed storage and processing of very large data sets. Internally, it uses the WebdHDFS REST API, which is built into the default Hadoop installation of Hortonworks HDFS.

File name The address of the namenode server of the HDFS. It starts with the protocol prefix “hdfs://” followed by the hostname and the port.

File name example: hdfs://12.34.56.78:8020
Host Path of the file hosts on Windows: ../system32/drivers/etc/hosts
Path of the file hosts on Linux: /etc/hosts

Path of file host to external URLs: <IP>sandbox-hdp.hortonworks.com
Example: 13.93.26.183 sandbox-hdp.hortonworks.com
Port Port for the host connection.

Supported distributions

See Systems Supported by Jedox Integrator for currently supported distributions. If you are interested in other distributions or other versions, please contact Jedox Support.

By default, HDFS runs in non-secure mode, which requires no actual authentication. Secure mode, whereby each user and service has to be authenticated by Kerberos, is currently not supported in the Hadoop package for Jedox Integrator.

Azure Blob Storage

Azure Blob storage is Microsoft's object storage solution for the cloud. Blob storage is optimized for storing different types of data.

Prerequisites:

Only Block Blobs with Access tier "Hot" or "Cool" are supported. New blobs will default to "Hot" access tier. Other limitations related to Azure Block Storage and particularly to Block Blobs can be found here.

The following parameters are required:

Account name Azure Storage account name
Account key Azure storage account access key used to authorize access to data in your storage account
Container name Container name created in Azure storage account specified by "Account Name"
Blob name Blob name together with the path to blob, e.g. samples/BikerProducts.csv

Updated December 4, 2024