Overview

A connection defines the information required to connect to an external system.

Pipelines communicate with external systems to read and write data. Most of these external systems require sensitive information, such as user names or passwords, to access the data. When you configure pipelines and pipeline fragments, you can enter the details needed to connect to the external system, or you can select an existing connection that contains the details.

Using connections provides the following benefits:

Increased security: When you use connections, you can limit the number of users that need to know the security credentials for external systems.; For example, you want to ensure that only the DevOps team knows the security credentials required to access external systems. A DevOps engineer logs into Control Hub to create all connections to the external systems, and then shares the connections with data engineers who design pipelines, granting them the ability to use the connections. Data engineers select the appropriate connection name for a pipeline stage, but cannot view the connection details.

Reusability: You can create a connection once and then reuse that connection in multiple pipelines. Reusing connections reduces the possibility of user errors and simplifies updates to connection values.; For example, you might create a single connection to your source data stored in Amazon S3. You name the connection SourceData. You develop multiple pipelines to process this source data. Each time you add an Amazon S3 origin to a pipeline, you simply select the existing SourceData connection. You do not need to re-enter the AWS authentication details for each Amazon S3 origin. When you need to update the authentication details, you make a single update to the connection. All Amazon S3 origins using that connection reflect the updated values in subsequent pipeline runs.

Connections require an authoring Data Collector. You can use connections in both Data Collector and Transformer pipelines.

You can use connections in Control Hub when designing Data Collector or Transformer pipelines. You cannot use connections in the Data Collector or Transformer pipeline canvas.

For more information on the supported connection types, see Connection Types Overview.

Connection Requirements

Before you create connections, note the following requirements:

Data Collector is required to create connections

You must select an available authoring Data Collector version 3.19.0 or later to create connections.

The Data Collector version and the stage libraries installed on the engine determine the connection types, such as Amazon S3 or JDBC, that you can create.

For a list of new connection types supported with each Data Collector version, see Data Collector Versions.

Data Collector and Transformer pipelines can use connections, based on the engine version and installed stage libraries

After creating connections, you can use those connections in both Data Collector and Transformer pipelines, as long as the version of the selected engine supports the connection type and the engine has the required stage libraries installed.

For example, to create an Amazon S3 connection, you must use Data Collector version 3.19.0 or later that has the Amazon Web Services stage library installed. You can use this connection in a Transformer pipeline, as long as you design and run the pipeline using Transformer version 3.16.0 or later with the Amazon Web Services stage library installed.

Using connections in pipelines requires the following minimum Data Collector and Transformer versions:

Data Collector version 3.19.0 or later
Transformer version 3.16.0 or later

Later versions introduce support for additional connection types, as listed in Data Collector Versions and Transformer Versions.

Important: You cannot use the system Data Collector to configure a pipeline that uses connections.

Data Collector Versions

The Data Collector version determines the connection types that you can create and then use in Data Collector pipelines.

Connection support was introduced with Data Collector version 3.19.0. Later versions introduce support for additional connection types.

The following table lists the new connection types supported with each Data Collector version:


Engine Version	Newly Supported Connection Types
Data Collector 5.6.0	Aerospike Orchestrator
Data Collector 5.4.0	CONNX
Data Collector 5.2.0	MongoDB Atlas
Data Collector 5.0.0	Hive MQTT OPC UA Client
Data Collector 4.4.0	CoAP Client Influx DB Influx DB 2.x Pulsar
Data Collector 4.2.0	Cassandra
Data Collector 4.1.0	Amazon Redshift MongoDB RabbitMQ Redis
Data Collector 4.0.0	Oracle SQL Server
Data Collector 3.22.0	MySQL PostgreSQL SFTP/FTP/FTPS
Data Collector 3.21.0	Elasticsearch
Data Collector 3.20.0	Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 Azure Synapse - Requires the Azure Synapse Enterprise stage library version 1.2.0 or later. JMS Snowflake - Requires the Snowflake Enterprise stage library version 1.7.0 or later. Snowpipe - Requires the Snowflake Enterprise stage library version 1.7.0 or later.
Data Collector 3.19.0	Amazon Kinesis Firehose Amazon Kinesis Streams Amazon S3 Amazon SQS Databricks Delta Lake - Requires the Databricks Enterprise stage library version 1.2.0 or later. Google BigQuery Google Cloud Storage Google Pub/Sub JDBC Kafka Kudu Salesforce

Transformer Versions

The Transformer version determines the connection types that you can use in Transformer pipelines.

Connection support was introduced with Transformer version 3.16.0. Later versions introduce support for additional connection types.

The following table lists the new connection types supported with each Transformer version:


Engine Version	Newly Supported Connection Types
Transformer 5.3.0	Amazon EMR Serverless - Creating this connection type requires an authoring Data Collector version 5.3.0 or later.
Transformer 4.0.0	Amazon Redshift - Creating this connection type requires an authoring Data Collector version 4.1.0 or later. MySQL - Creating this connection type requires an authoring Data Collector version 3.22.0 or later. Oracle - Creating this connection type requires an authoring Data Collector version 4.0.0 or later. PostgreSQL - Creating this connection type requires an authoring Data Collector version 3.22.0 or later. SQL Server - Creating this connection type requires an authoring Data Collector version 4.0.0 or later.
Transformer 3.18.0	Elasticsearch - Creating this connection type requires an authoring Data Collector version 3.21.0 or later. Kafka - Creating this connection type requires an authoring Data Collector version 3.19.0 or later. Snowflake - Creating this connection type requires an authoring Data Collector version 3.20.0 or later that has the Snowflake Enterprise stage library version 1.7.0 or later installed.
Transformer 3.16.0	Amazon EMR Cluster Manager Amazon S3 JDBC Kudu Note: Creating these connection types requires an authoring Data Collector version 3.19.0 or later.

Working with Connections

The Connections view lists all connections that you have access to.

You can complete the following tasks in the Connections view:

Create connections.
Assign tags to connections.
Test that configured connection values are valid.
View connection details, including the connection type, assigned tags, and the list of pipelines and pipeline fragments that use the connection.
Edit connection details.
Share connections with other users and groups.
Delete connections.

The following image shows a list of connections in the Connections view. Each connection is listed with its type, tags, and owner:

Note the following icons that display for connections when you select a connection. You'll use these icons frequently as you manage connections:


Icon	Name	Description
	Add	Add a connection.
	Refresh	Refresh the list of connections.
	Toggle Filter Column	Toggle the display of the Filter column, where you can filter connections by connection type or tag. You can also search for connections by name or description.
	Share	Share connections with other users and groups, as described in Permissions.
	Edit	Edit the connection.
	Delete	Delete the connection.