Connect Loader SDK
Alteryx Connect helps you explore your company's data by providing important metadata information, such as the author or location, or social information, such as use frequency or related data.
Connect uses loaders to load data, regardless of location or format. Loaders are available for more-widely used servers and database systems; however, the Connect Loader SDK allows you to create custom loaders for existing databases, as well as create and integrate custom metadata and object types into Alteryx Connect.
Loader support
New loaders for existing object types are fully supported, including migration to future versions. This includes database structures. Loaders for new object types, such as data models, are not full supported. Migration to future versions of Connect may not be supported.
Connect SDK overview
The Connect Loader SDK consists of two major Components: the REST API and the Designer Connect Tools. The API provides communication between your organization's data system and Connect. You can use the REST API and the Designer Connect tools to customize the loading conditions.
- A metadata loader harvests data from a data source. The metadata loader can be:
- One of the Alteryx Connect metadata loaders that are supplied with the product.
- A custom Alteryx workflow created in Designer using the Connect Json Builder tool to create formatted JSON out of the dataset and the ConnectOutput tool to call a set of Webservices that are stored and created in Connect.
- A custom metadata loader that extracts metadata from the source system and call the REST API.
- The metadata loader calls the REST API.
- The REST API stores the data in the Stage, a container within the SDK that holds and prepares data being transferred from a data source to Connect.
- A Load code, or unique identifier of the run from the source system, is associated with the data, as well as an App definition, code that defines the appearance and structure of an asset within Connect by defining the number of columns, rows, and data types allowed.
- Using the Load code and the App definition, the data is mapped to Connect and formatted according to the set parameters.
- The data is accessible from the Connect platform as Assets, single items of information found in your company's instance of Connect. In Connect, these are categorized as Analytic Workflows, Reports, Data Sources, Glossary, and People.