Connectors → Autoline

About Autoline

Autoline a suite of tools that enables you to manage all aspects of vehicle sales and stocking, covering showroom operations, sales administration, stock control and accounting for new and used vehicles.

About the Autoline Connector

The Autoline connector is a cdata connector that enables you to directly connect to your Autoline suite to be able to query your data. The connector uses the cdata.jdbc.jdbcodbc.jar driver to connect Autoline.

Note

The Incorta Autoline connector is available for preview only.

For a comprehensive reference of the connector properties, refer to CData JDBC-ODBC Driver.

The Autoline connector supports the following Incorta specific functionality:

Feature	Supported
Chunking	✔
Data Agent	✔
Encryption at Ingest
Incremental Load	✔
Multi-Source	✔
OAuth
Performance Optimized	✔
Remote
Single-Source	✔
Spark Extraction
Webhook Callbacks	✔

Note

The Autoline connector supports two types of incremental loads: using a numeric column and using a date or timestamp column. To learn more, see Types of Incremental Load.

Autoline connector requirements and prerequisites

The Autoline connector requires an ODBC driver installed only on Windows machines, so it requires using Data Agent:

Install the Data Agent with the Autoline Connector on a Windows machine where the Autoline ODBC driver is installed.
Start the Data Agent Service.
Create a Data Agent Connection in your Incorta Instance.

Allow the Autoline connector

In order to use the Autoline connector, a Cluster Management Console (CMC) administrator must first allow it. Here are the steps:

Sign in to the CMC.
In the Navigation bar, select Clusters.
In the cluster list, select a Cluster name.
In the canvas tabs, select Connectors.
Select Manage Connectors.
Select Allow for Autoline.
Select OK.

Note

There is an associated cost to allow a CData connector. Contact your Incorta Sales Executive for details.

Steps to connect a Autoline data source and Incorta

To connect a Autoline data source and Incorta, here are the high-level steps, tools, and procedures:

Create an external data source
Create a schema with the Schema Wizard
or, Create a schema with the Schema Designer
Load the schema
Explore the schema

Create an external data source

A Tenant Administrator (Super User), a user that belongs to a group with the SuperRole role, or a user that belongs to a group with the Schema Manager role can create an external data source for a given tenant.

Here are the steps to create an external data source with the Autoline connector:

Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
In the Navigation bar, select Data.
In the Action bar, select + New → Add Data.
In the Choose a Data Source dialog, in Query Service, select Autoline.
In the New Data Source dialog, specify the applicable connector properties.
To test, select Test Connection.
Select Ok to save your changes.

The Autoline connector properties

Here are the properties for the Autoline connector:

Property	Control	Description
Driver	text box	Enter the ODBC driver that you need to connect to
DSN	text box	Enter the name of the ODBC data source name
User	text box	Enter the database account username.
Password	text box	Enter the database password
Verbosity	text box	Enter the verbosity level that determines the amount of detail you need in the log file. Default value is `1`.
Logfile	text box	The path can be a local disk pathEnter the path of the log file, which can be a local path.
MaxLogFileSize	text box	Enter the maximum log file size in bytes. Default is `20MBs`. When the maximum file size is reached, a new file is created in the same folder with the date and time appended to the end of the file name.

Create a schema with the Schema Wizard

Here are the steps to create a Autoline schema with the Schema Wizard:

Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
In the Action bar, select + New → Schema Wizard.
In (1) Choose a Source, specify the following:
- For Enter a name, enter the physical schema name.
- For Select a Datasource, select the Autoline data source.
- Optionally, enter a description.
In the Schema Wizard footer, select Next.
In (2) Manage Tables, in the Data Panel, first select the name of the Data Source, and then check the Select All checkbox.
In the Schema Wizard footer, select Next.
In (3) Finalize, in the Schema Wizard footer, select Create Schema.

Create a schema with the Schema Designer

Here are the steps to create a Autoline schema using the Schema Designer:

Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
In the Action bar, select + New → Create Schema.
In the Create Schema dialog, in Name, specify the physical schema name, and then select Save.
In Start adding tables to your schema, select Autoline.
In the Data Source dialog, specify the Autoline table data source properties.
Select Add.
In the Table Editor, in the Table Summary section, enter the table name.
To save your changes, in the Action bar, select Done.

The Autoline table data source properties

For a physical schema table in Incorta, you can define the following Autoline-specific data source properties as follows:

Property	Control	Description
Type	drop down list	The default is Autoline
Data Source	drop down list	Select the Autoline external data source
Incremental	toggle	Enable this property to configure the incremental load for this physical schema table. See Types of Incremental Load.
Incremental Extract Using	drop down list	Enable Incremental to configure this property. Select between Last Successful Extract Time and Maximum Value of a Column. See Types of Incremental Load.
Incremental Column	drop down list	Enable Incremental and select Maximum Value of a Column to configure this property. Select the column to check its maximum value. The Loader will track and use the greatest value or most recent timestamp for each incremental load operation.
Query	text box	Enter the SQL Select query to retrieve data from the Autoline dataset
Update Query	text box	Enable Incremental to configure this property. Enter the SQL Select query to use during an incremental load. The query and update query should be of the same structure, that is, the same selected columns.
Incremental Field Type	drop down list	Enable Incremental to configure this property. Select the format of the incremental field. The available options vary according to the incremental type and the selected column, if any.
Fetch Size	text box	For performance improvement, define the number of records that will be retrieved from the dataset in each batch until all records are retrieved. The default is 5000.
Chunking Method	drop down list	Select the chunking method to allow for the parallel extraction of large tables. The default is No Chunking. There are two chunking methods: ● By Size of Chunking (Single Table) ● By Date/Timestamp
Chunk Size	text box	Select By Size of Chunking for the Chunking Method to set this property. Enter the number of records to extract in each chunk in relation to the Fetch Size. The default is 3 times the fetch size.
Order Column	drop down list	Select By Size of Chunking for the Chunking Method to set this property. Select a column in the source table you want to order by before chunking. It is typically an ID column and it must be numeric.
Upper Bound for Order Column	text box	Optionally, enter the maximum value for the order column
Lower Bound for Order Column	text box	Optionally, enter the minimum value for the order column
Order Column (Date/Timestamp)	drop down list	Select By Date/Timestamp for the Chunking Method to set this property. Select a column in the source table you want to order by before chunking. It should be a Date/Timestamp column.
Chunk Period	drop down list	Select the chunk period that will be used in dividing chunks: ● Daily ● Weekly ● Monthly ● Yearly ● Custom
Number of days	text box	Select Custom for the Chunk Period to set this property. Enter the chunking period in days.
Callback	toggle	Enable this property to enable post extraction callback. This enables callback on the data source dataset(s) by invoking a certain callback URL with parameters containing details about the load job.
Callback URL	text box	Enable Callback to configure this property. Specify the callback URL.

View the schema diagram with the Schema Diagram Viewer

Here are the steps to view the physical schema diagram using the Schema Diagram Viewer:

Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
In the list of schemas, select the Autoline schema.
In the Schema Designer, in the Action bar, select Diagram.

Load the schema

Here are the steps to perform a Full Load of the Autoline schema using the Schema Designer:

Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
In the list of schemas, select the Autoline schema.
In the Schema Designer, in the Action bar, select Load → Full Load.
To review the load status, in Last Load Status, select the date.

Explore the schema

With the full load of the Autoline schema complete, you can use the Analyzer to explore the schema, create your first insight, and save the insight to a new dashboard.

To open the Analyzer from the schema, follow these steps:

In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
In the Schema Manager, in the List view, select the Autoline schema.
In the Schema Designer, in the Action bar, select Explore Data.

For more information about how to use the Analyzer to create insights, see Analyzer and Visualizations.

Additional Considerations

Types of Incremental Load

You can enable incremental load for a Autoline table data. There are two types of incremental extracts: Last Successful Extract Time and Maximum Value of a Column

Last Successful Extract Time

In this type, the Loader Service fetches updates since the last time the table was loaded. This is determined by the difference between the current time and the database timestamp.

Maximum Value of a Column

The column-based strategy depends on an extra column called Incremental Column in each table. The Autoline connector supports both timestamp and numeric columns. A timestamp column is of the type date or timestamp. A numeric column is of the type int or long.

[[impportant| Important]] | Changing the incremental load strategy requires a full load to ensure data integrity.

Incremental Load Example

In this example, the invoices table must contain a column of the type Date or Timestamp in order to load the table incrementally with a last successful extract time strategy. In this case, the name of the date column is ModifiedDate and the format of the column is Timestamp.

Here are the data source property values for this example:

Incremental Load: enabled
Query: SELECT * FROM invoices
Update Query: SELECT * FROM invoices WHERE ModifiedDate > ?

Note

? is a variable in the update query that contains the last schema refresh date.

Incremental Field Type: Timestamp

Note

When defining an update query for an incremental load, you are able to use the ? reference character. The ? character will be replaced with the last incremental reference to construct a valid query to the database. The ? reference character is not valid in a standard query.