Unlocking Proprietary Data with PostgreSQL Foreign Data Wrappers Pat Patterson

Unlocking Proprietary Data with PostgreSQL Foreign Data Wrappers Pat Patterson

Unlocking Proprietary Data
with PostgreSQL Foreign
Data Wrappers
Pat Patterson
Principal Developer Evangelist
ppatterson@salesforce.com
@metadaddy
Agenda
 Foreign Data Wrappers
 Writing FDW’s in C
 Multicorn
 Database.com FDW for PostgreSQL
 FDW in action
Why Foreign Data Wrappers?
 External data sources look like local tables!
– Other SQL database
• MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, etc
– NoSQL database
• CouchDB, Redis, etc
– File
– LDAP
– Web services
• Twitter!
Why Foreign Data Wrappers?
 Make the database do the work
– SELECT syntax
• DISTINCT, ORDER BY etc
– Functions
• COUNT(), MIN(), MAX() etc
– JOIN external data to internal tables
– Use standard apps, libraries for data analysis,
reporting
Foreign Data Wrappers
 2003 - SQL Management of External Data (SQL/MED)
 2011 – PostgreSQL 9.1 implementation
– Read-only
– SELECT-clause optimization
– WHERE-clause push-down
• Minimize data requested from external source
 Future Improvements
– JOIN push-down
• Where two foreign tables are in the same server
– Support cursors
FDW’s in PostgreSQL
 ‘Compiled language’ (C) interface
 Implement a set of callbacks
typedef struct FdwRoutine
{
NodeTag type;
/* These functions are required. */
GetForeignRelSize_function GetForeignRelSize;
GetForeignPaths_function GetForeignPaths;
GetForeignPlan_function GetForeignPlan;
ExplainForeignScan_function ExplainForeignScan;
BeginForeignScan_function BeginForeignScan;
IterateForeignScan_function IterateForeignScan;
ReScanForeignScan_function ReScanForeignScan;
EndForeignScan_function EndForeignScan;
/* These functions are optional. */
AnalyzeForeignTable_function AnalyzeForeignTable;
} FdwRoutine;
FDW’s in PostgreSQL
 Much work!
• CouchDB FDW
• https://github.com/ZhengYang/couchdb_fdw/
• couchdb_fdw.c > 1700 LoC
Multicorn
 http://multicorn.org/
 PostgreSQL 9.1+ extension
 Python framework for FDW’s
 Implement two methods…
Multicorn
from multicorn import ForeignDataWrapper
class ConstantForeignDataWrapper(ForeignDataWrapper):
def __init__(self, options, columns):
super(ConstantForeignDataWrapper,
self).__init__(options, columns)
self.columns = columns
def execute(self, quals, columns):
for index in range(20):
line = {}
for column_name in self.columns:
line[column_name] =
'%s %s' % (column_name, index)
yield line
Database.com FDW for PostgreSQL
 OAuth login to Database.com / Force.com
– Refresh on token expiry
 Force.com REST API
– SOQL query
• SELECT firstname, lastname FROM Contact
 Request thread puts records in Queue, execute()
method gets them from Queue
 JSON parsing – skip embedded metadat
 < 250 lines code
Demo
Conclusion
 Foreign Data Wrappers make the whole world look like
tables!
 Writing FDW’s in C is hard!
– Or, at least, time consuming!
 Writing FDW’s in Python via Multicorn is easy!
– Or, at least, quick!
 Try it for yourself!
Resources
 http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/SQL/MED
 http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Foreign_data_wrappers
 http://multicorn.org/
 https://github.com/metadaddy-sfdc/Database.comFDW-for-PostgreSQL