Create a System DSN¶

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Prerequisites
Create a System DSN (Windows)

The following steps describe how to create a system Data Source Name (DSN) for the BI Connector’s mongosqld process. A DSN is a saved configuration which describes a database connection to be used by an ODBC driver. Once the DSN is created for the BI Connector, you can configure a wide range of SQL clients and BI tools to use the DSN and import data from MongoDB.

Prerequisites¶

Before creating a DSN, you should:

Download and install Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015
Download and install the C Authentication Plugin for your platform from the releases page.
Download and install the MySQL Connector/ODBC driver (Version 5.3.10) for your platform. If you plan to use BI Connector with SSL enabled, you should use the MySQL Enterprise Edition installer. Otherwise you can use the Community Edtion.

Important

The BI Connector is only compatible with version 5.3.x of the MySQL Connector/ODBC driver.

Create a System DSN (Windows)¶

1

Start the Microsoft ODBC Sources program.¶

Choose the program version (64-bit or 32-bit) which is appropriate for your system and ODBC driver version.

2

Select the `System DSN` tab.¶

3

Click the `Add` button.¶

Screenshot of the Windows ODBC Administrator application

4

Select `MySQL ODBC Unicode Driver` from the list of available drivers.¶

5

Fill in the necessary form fields.¶

Click the Details button to expose the lower half of the form.

The following form fields are required:

Field Name Description

Data Source Name A name of your choice.

TCP/IP Server Address of the server where your mongosqld process is running. If you have enabled BI Connector on MongoDB Atlas, you can find the hostname of the server where mongosqld is running in the connection information for your cluster.

Port Port number of your mongosqld process.

User

Required when running with --auth enabled and when connecting to an Atlas BI Connector instance. Username of the MongoDB user who is authenticated to use your target database.

You can specify the following authentication options after your username as URI-style query parameters:

Connection Option Description

source

Specify the name of the database which stores the user’s credentials. If you do not specify this option, the MongoDB Connector for BI will default to the current database associated with the MySQL connection.

For authentication mechanisms such as PLAIN (LDAP) that delegate credential storage to other services, set the source value to $external.

mechanism

Specify the mechanism that the MongoDB Connector for BI should use to authenticate the connection. Accepted values include:

SCRAM-SHA-1 (default)
PLAIN (LDAP SASL)

LDAP requires MongoDB Enterprise. Set the source to $external when using LDAP.

Note

Neither Kerberos nor x.509 are supported.

Append the name of the authentication database to the username in the format:

copy

<username>?source=<database-name>

For example, if user dbUser is authenticated in the admin database, the User field should contain the string dbUser?source=admin.

Password Required when running with --auth enabled. The authenticated user’s password.

Database The name of the database to connect to, e.g. test.

Authentication

Required when running with --auth enabled. The default authentication method. To use the authentication plugin, fill in this field with the string mongosql_auth.

Note

The Authentication field is at the bottom of the form. Be careful not to miss it.

The following example configuration assumes the following:

A mongosqld instance running on localhost port 3307 with authentication enabled.
A mongod instance running with authentication enabled.
A MongoDB user named dbUser who is authenticated to use the test database.

The values you enter may be different.

6

Click the `Test` button to test the ODBC connection.¶

If the connection is successful, click OK to add the DSN. If the connection fails, check to make sure your MongoDB user is correctly authenticated for the database named in the connection, and that the authentication plugin is installed.