This section describes how to set up ODBC connectivity and configure DSNs on several Linux distributions: Debian-based systems, like Ubuntu, and Red Hat Linux platforms, like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, and Fedora.

Minimum Linux Versions

Here are the minimum supported versions for Red Hat-based and Debian-based systems:

OS	Min. Version
Ubuntu	11.04
Debian	7
RHEL	6.9
CentOS	6.9
Fedora	13
SUSE	12.1

Installing the Driver Dependencies

Run the following commands as root or with sudo to install the necessary dependencies:

• Debian/Ubuntu:
  

  apt-get install libc6 libstdc++6 zlib1g libgcc1

• RHEL/CentOS/Fedora:
  

  yum install glibc libstdc++ zlib libgcc

Here are the corresponding libraries required by the driver:

Debian/Ubuntu Package	RHEL/CentOS/Fedora Package	File
libc6	glibc	linux-vdso.1
libc6	glibc	libm.so.6
libc6	glibc	librt.so.1
libc6	glibc	libdl.so.2
libc6	glibc	libpthread.so.0
libc6	glibc	libc.so.6
libc6	glibc	ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
libstdc++6	libstdc++	libstdc++.so.6
zlib1g	zlib	libz.so.1
libgcc1	libgcc	libgcc_s.so.1

Installing the Driver

You can use standard package management systems to install the driver.

On Debian-based systems, like Ubuntu, run the following command with root or sudo:

dpkg -i /path/to/driver/setup/TaxJarODBCDriverforUnix.deb 

On systems that support the RPM package format, run the following command with root or sudo:

rpm -ivh /path/to/driver/TaxJarODBCDriverforUnix.rpm 

Licensing the Driver

Run the following commands to license the driver. To activate a trial, omit the <key> input.

cd /opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-taxjar/bin/
sudo ./install-license.sh <key>

Connecting through the Driver Manager

The driver manager loads the driver and passes function calls from the application to the driver. You need to register the driver with the driver manager and you define DSNs in the driver manager's configuration files.

The driver installation registers the driver with the unixODBC driver manager and creates a system DSN. The unixODBC driver manager can be used from Python and from many other applications. Your application may embed another driver manager.

Creating the DSN

See Using unixODBC to install unixODBC and configure DSNs. See Using the DataDirect Driver Manager to create a DSN to connect to OBIEE, Informatica, and SAS.

Authenticating a TaxJar Account

To authenticate to the TaxJar API, you will need to first obtain the API Key from the TaxJar UI. Remember that the API is available only for Professional and Premium TaxJar plans. If you already have a Professional or Premium plan you can find the APIKey by logging in the TaxJar UI and going to Account->TaxJar API. After obtaining the API Key you can set the APIKey connection property. That's all you need to do for a successful connection.

Extra Notes

• By default the driver will retrieve data of the last 3 months in case the entity supports date range filtering. You can use the StartDate to set the minimum creation date of the data retrieved.
• If the API Key has been created for a sandbox API account please set UseSandbox to true in order for a successful connection.
• In case you are using a sandbox API account please remember that not everything will work as expected. This is also documented in the TaxJar developer docs here: Sandbox Environment and here: Unsupported endpoints
• The TaxJar API rate limiting is really generous. (10000 requests per minute for TaxJar Professional plans and 25000 per minute for the TaxJar Premium plans).
• Because of the TaxJar API limits we are restricted to make an http request for each row in order to collect as much data as we can. We suggest to increase the value of the MaxThreads connection property.
• The default value of MaxThreads has been set to 20 which means it will make at most 20 concurrent requests. To improve the performance of the driver consider increasing this value based on the machines resources.

Set the Driver Encoding

The ODBC drivers need to specify which encoding to use with the ODBC Driver Manager. By default, the CData ODBC Drivers for Unix are configured to use UTF-16 which is compatible with unixODBC, but other Driver Managers may require alternative encoding.

Alternatively, if you are using the ODBC driver from an application that uses the ANSI ODBC API it may be necessary to set the ANSI code page. For example, to import Japanese characters in an ANSI application, you can specify the code page in the config file '/opt/cdata/cdata-odbc-driver-for-taxjar/lib/cdata.odbc.taxjar.ini':

[Driver]
AnsiCodePage = 932