Connector for Apache Drill – Features and settings

You can connect to and access data from Apache Drill. On this page, you can find information about the capabilities, available settings, and things to keep in mind when you work with data connections to Apache Drill.

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Connector features

The following functionality is available when you access data with the connector for Apache Drill.


Feature	Supported?
Load methods	Import (in-memory) External (in-database) On-demand
Custom queries	Yes
Stored procedures	No
Custom connection properties	No
Single sign-on with identity provider	No
Authoring in web client	No
Included in Spotfire distribution on Linux	See Drivers and Data Sources in Spotfire.

Data source properties

The Spotfire connector for Apache Drill does not have built-in controls for setting and changing data source properties.

When you create or edit a connection to Apache Drill, you use a DSN (Data Source Name) on your computer. From the DSN, Spotfire imports the connection string information about how to connect to the data source. See Using DSNs to create data connections.

Supported data types

When you are setting up a connection to an external data source, Spotfire needs to map the data types in the data source to data types in Spotfire. The following are the data types that the Apache Drill connector supports.


Database data type	Spotfire data type
BINARY	Binary
BINARY VARYING	Binary
VARBINARY	Binary
BIT	Boolean
BOOLEAN	Boolean
DATE	Date
TIME WITH TIME ZONE	DateTime
TIMESTAMP	DateTime
TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE	DateTime
DECIMAL	Currency/Decimal
DOUBLE	Real/Double
REAL	SingleReal/Float
INTEGER	Integer
SMALLINT	Integer
TINYINT	Integer
BIGINT	LongInteger/Long
ANY	String
ARRAY	String
CHAR	String
CHARACTER	String
CHARACTER VARYING	String
MAP	String
NATIONAL CHARACTER	String
NATIONAL CHARACTER VARYING	String
NULL	String
UNION	String
VARCHAR	String
WCHAR	String
WVARCHAR	String
TIME	Time

Supported functions

Supported functions are the functions that you can use when you work with in-database data tables, for example for calculated columns and custom expressions.

Note: Some supported functions might not be possible to use with your database. This depends on what functions are available in the database, which often differs between database versions and types.

The following are the functions that the Apache Drill connector supports.


Function type	Functions supported
Date and Time	`CURDATE`, `CURTIME`, `DAYOFMONTH`, `DAYOFWEEK`, `DAYOFYEAR`, `HOUR`, `MINUTE`, `MONTH`, `NOW`, `QUARTER`, `SECOND`, `WEEK`, `YEAR`
Conditional	`COALESCE`, `NULLIF`
Math	`ABS`, `ACOS`, `ASIN`, `ATAN`, `CBRT`, `CEILING`, `COS`, `COT`, `DEGREES`, `EXP`, `FLOOR`, `LOG`, `LOG10`, `MOD`, `PI`, `POWER`, `RADIANS`, `RAND`, `SIGN`, `SIN`, `SQRT`, `TAN`
Operators	`+`, `-`, `*`, `/`
Statistical	`AVG`, `COUNT`, `MAX`, `MIN`, `STDDEV`, `STDDEV_POP`, `STDDEV_SAMP`, `SUM`, `VAR_POP`, `VAR_SAMP`, `VARIANCE`
Text	`CONCAT`, `LCASE`, `LOWER`, `LTRIM`, `REPLACE`, `RTRIM`, `SUBSTRING`, `UCASE`, `UPPER`