Accessing data sources with the Flight service
The Flight service provides read and write access to various data sources through a common API, without you having to deal with database drivers that are specific to the type of the data source. The Flight service provides a single interface for working with many different data sources.
Required services
The Flight service is available only if the common core services are installed. The common core services are not installed separately. They are automatically installed if you install a service that has a dependency on them. For information about which services install the common core services, see Service software requirements.
Components
The Flight API in Cloud Pak for Data is based on the following components:
- The Flight client API from open source Flight Arrow.
- For more information, see the Apache Arrow documentation and Arrow Flight RPC.
- For Python, see Flight client for Python.
- For R, see Connecting to Flight RPC Servers.
- The location and authentication method for the Flight server in Cloud Pak for Data. Applications don't need to retrieve credentials from a connection asset and submit them to a database driver. The Flight service automatically retrieves credentials transparently.
- Data requests that you can use to specify which files or tables you want to access. See Flight data requests.
- The
itc_utils
library, which simplifies reading data with the Flight client. For examples, see Examples of Flight service with itc_utils and pandas.
Services and tools
You can use the Flight service APIs with these services that accept custom Python or R code:
- Analytics Engine powered by Apache Spark
- IBM Match 360 with Watson
- Watson Studio
- Watson Machine Learning
- Watson Machine Learning Accelerator
Learn more
- Using the Flight service in your applications
- Flight data requests
- Examples of Flight service data requests with Python
- Examples of Flight service data requests with R
- Flight service in Python notebooks
- Flight service in R notebooks
- Examples of Flight service with itc_utils and pandas
- Best practices for loading large volumes of data from a file or connection
Parent topic: Adding data to a project