Creating a Connector

Overview

ROMA Connect supports connections of common data source types, such as relational databases, message queues, APIs, NoSQL databases, and OBS. These data sources can be directly used in ROMA Connect. You can integrate your data from the source to the destination only by connecting to data sources and executing data integration tasks.

If ROMA Connect cannot access your data source, develop a plug-in to read and write the data source. Besides, the plug-in should serve as a RESTful API for ROMA Connect to access. Such data source plug-ins are also called connectors, and the data sources accessed through these connectors are custom data sources.

A connector can be directly connected to a data source, which is a data exchange channel between the data source and ROMA Connect. ROMA Connect reads and writes data sources by calling this RESTful API.

After developing and deploying a connector, create it on ROMA Connect and define related parameters for connection.

Procedure

Log in to the ROMA Connect console and choose Assets in the navigation pane on the left.
Click Create Connector in the upper right corner of the page.

On the Create Connector page, enter configuration information about a connector.

**Table 1** Connector parameters
Parameter	Description
Name	Connector name. It is recommended that you name it by rule to facilitate search.
Type	Select the permissions type of the connector for data operations. Reader/Writer: reads and writes data sources. Reader: reads data sources only. Writer: writes data sources only.
Description	Brief description of the connector.
Data Source Metadata	Parameters for ROMA Connect to access the data source. The message data exchanged between ROMA Connect and the connector is in JSON format, and the parameters are transferred in the key-value format. Click Add Parameter to add the parameters for accessing the data source. Parameter Name: name of a parameter to be displayed on the data source configuration page. It is only used to identify a parameter and does not take effect in an actual data integration task. Parameter Key: parameter key transferred in a data source connection request. Parameter Value Type: type of the parameter value to be configured on the data source connection page. Text: text box. Select: drop-down list box. Date: date control, which allows you to select a date and time. Textarea: character text box, which supports line breaks. Verification Rule: whether to verify the input parameter values. None No special characters: The system checks whether the parameter value contains special characters. Special characters include digits, letters, hyphens (-), and underscores (_). Default Value: default value to be transferred if a parameter is not specified. If this parameter is left blank, no default value will be transferred. Mandatory: whether the parameter is mandatory.
Reader Metadata	Reader parameters of a data source. When the data source is selected as the source of a data integration task, the reader parameters defined here must be set in the data integration task. The message data exchanged between ROMA Connect and the connector is in JSON format, and the parameters are transferred in the key-value format. Click Add Parameter to add the reader parameters of the data source. The parameter configuration description is similar to that of Data Source Metadata.
Writer Metadata	Writer parameters of a data source. When the data source is selected as the destination of a data integration task, the writer parameters defined here must be set in the data integration task. The message data exchanged between ROMA Connect and the connector is in JSON format, and the parameters are transferred in the key-value format. Click Add Parameter to add the writer parameters of the data source. The parameter configuration description is similar to that of Data Source Metadata.