Connect to GitHub data using JDBC for your Analytics and Reporting

GitHub is arguably the most favorite Source Version Control software which has a cloud hosted solution as well an enterprise private hosting solution targeted to the engineering organizations of software, Web, and technology companies. There are lot of insights that can be discovered using the data in GitHub by accessing GitHub data from tools like Tableau, Tibco etc., With the Progress DataDirect GitHub JDBC connector, you can now connect to your data in GitHub as easily as you could with any JDBC driver. In this tutorial, we will walk you through how easily you can connect and access GitHub data and generate reports on it from any supported JDBC compliant reporting tool.

1. Download Progress DataDirect GitHub JDBC connector from here.
2. Installing the Driver
   • If you are on Windows, extract the PROGRESS_DATADIRECT_JDBC_GITHUB_6.0.0_WIN.zip and run the PROGRESS_DATADIRECT_JDBC_INSTALL.exe to install the JDBC driver.
   • If you are on Linux, extract the PROGRESS_DATADIRECT_JDBC_GITHUB_6.0.0.zip and run the PROGRESS_DATADIRECT_JDBC_INSTALL.jar to start the installation.
3. After you have completed the installation, you can find Progress DataDirect GitHub JDBC connector
   • On Windows, you will find it at
     C:\Program Files\Progress\DataDirect\JDBC_60\lib\github.jar
   • On Linux, you will find it at /home/<username>/Progress/DataDirect/JDBC_60/lib/github.jar

Before we get started on GitHub connector configuration, let’s look at supported GitHub authentication methods and how you can get the details needed for the specific authentication method you want to use.

1. Progress DataDirect GitHub JDBC connector supports 2 authentication methods – Basic and OAuth2.
2. For basic authentication, you will need to have Username and Password for your GitHub.
3. For OAuth2 authentication,
   1. Go to Settings -> Developer Settings -> OAuth Apps and click on Register a new application
   2. Provide the OAuth application name, Homepage URL and Authorization callback URL you want to use to get the access token.

      

      Note: For the GitHub enterprise, you need to specify a port for localhost for a successful authorization.

   3. Click on Register Application, on the next screen you should see the OAuth credentials. Copy the client id, client secret and authorization callback url and store them securely.
      
      
      

1. Progress DataDirect GitHub JDBC connector comes with inbuilt JDBC Configuration manager that helps you configure the connection to your GitHub instance easily.
2. To Launch the GitHub JDBC Configuration Manager, double click the github.jar or run using java -jar github.jar
3. You should now see the below configuration manager launched in your browser

   

4. Provide the Server name for your GitHub instance in the Server Name text box.
5. Next, choose the Authentication Method you want to use from the drop down.
6. If you are using
   • Basic – Fill in the username and password for your GitHub
   • OAuth2 – Fill in the Client ID, Client Secret, Authorization URI, Token URI Authorization callback URL(Redirect URI) in the respective fields, which you generated in step 3.

     

   • Click on Fetch OAuth Token to get the access token you need to connect to GitHub. You will now see a pop out for Authorization from GitHub as shown below.

     

   • Click on Authorize and now you should see the access token filled out in the GitHub Configuration Manager.

      

7. Click on Test Connect. Now you should see a list of tables exposed by the Progress DataDirect GitHub JDBC driver.

   

8. You can start testing out the queries, and once you are done – you can copy the JDBC connection string so that you can start using the Progress DataDirect GitHub JDBC driver with other applications or in your programs.

1. Now that you are familiar with the GitHub connector, you can start using the connector with your favorite tools like Tableau, Tibco, Jupyter, IBM Cognos, etc.
2. Here’s an example of using Progress DataDirect GitHub connector with Tableau to generate some reports.
3. To get started, copy github.jar to C:\Program Files\Tableau\Drivers from the install location of the GitHub connector as describe in section 2.
4. Open Tableau and choose your datasource Other Databases (JDBC) as shown below.
5. In the URL field, paste the connection string you generated in the previous section.
   
   

   

6. Click on Sign In, now you should see list of schemas and on selection of schema GITHUB, you should now see list of tables as shown below.

    

7. You can now start dragging tables into the canvas or create custom queries and start creating reports on your GitHub data.
   

We hope this tutorial helped you to get started with Progress DataDirect GitHub JDBC connector and connect to your data in GitHub. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or issues using the driver, we will be happy to help you.