Connection types

You can add connections to a broad array of services (data sources) in projects and catalogs. Source connections can only be used to read data; target connections can only be used to load (save) data. When you create a target connection, be sure to use credentials that have Write permission or you won’t be able to save data to the target.

From a project, you must create a connection to a data source before you can read data from it or load data to it.

From a catalog, you must add a connection asset before you can add data assets for the tables you can access from the connection.

• IBM offerings
• Third-party services
• Custom JDBC data sources

IBM offerings

• BigInsights HDFS
• Cloud Object Storage
• Cloud Object Storage (infrastructure)
• Cloudant
  When you create your Cloudant service on IBM Cloud, you must choose “Use both legacy credentials and IAM” for Available authentication methods.
• Compose for MySQL
• Compose for PostgreSQL
• Db2
• Db2 Big SQL
• Db2 for i
• Db2 for z/OS
• Db2 Hosted
• Db2 on Cloud
• Db2 Warehouse
• HDFS via Execution Engine for Hadoop
  Before you configure the connection, your administrator must register the Hadoop cluster from the Hadoop Integration panel.
• Informix
• Pure Data for Analytics
• Watson Analytics (supports source connections only)

Third-party services

• Amazon Redshift
• Amazon S3
• Apache Hive
• Cloudera Impala
• Dropbox
  To obtain the application token that’s needed to configure a Dropbox connection, follow the instructions at the Dropbox OAuth guide.
• File system
• FTP (Remote file system transfer)
• Generic JDBC
  Before you configure the connection, your administrator must import a JDBC driver for it.
• Google BigQuery
• Google Cloud Storage
• Hortonworks HDFS
  
• Looker
  Before you configure the connection, you’ll need to set up API3 credentials for your Looker instance. See instructions at Looker API Authentication.
• Microsoft Azure Data Lake Store
  Before you configure the connection, you must create an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) web application, get an application ID, authentication key, and a tenant ID. Then you must assign the Azure AD application to the Azure Data Lake Store account file or folder. Follow Steps 1, 2, and 3 at Service-to-service authentication with Data Lake Store using Azure Active Directory.
• Microsoft Azure SQL Database
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Minio
• MySQL
• Oracle
• Pivotal Greenplum
• PostgreSQL
• Salesforce.com
• Sybase
• Sybase IQ
• Tableau Online
• Teradata
  Teradata JDBC Driver 15.10 Copyright (C) 2015 - 2017 by Teradata. All rights reserved. IBM provides embedded usage of the Teradata JDBC Driver under license from Teradata solely for use as part of the IBM Watson service offering.