Linux DSN Configuration

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) and Fedora.

Minimum Linux Versions

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


OS	Min. Version
Ubuntu	18.04
Debian	10
RHEL	8
Fedora	28
SUSE	15

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/Fedora:
```
yum install glibc libstdc++ zlib libgcc
```

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/ActOnODBCDriverforUnix.deb

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

rpm -ivh /path/to/driver/ActOnODBCDriverforUnix.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-acton/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 to Act-On

Act-On uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to create an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.

Desktop Applications

CData provides an embedded OAuth application that simplifies OAuth desktop Authentication. Alternatively, you can create a custom application. See Creating a Custom OAuth App for information on creating custom applications and reasons for doing so.

For authentication, the only difference between the two methods is that you must set two additional connection properties when using custom OAuth applications.

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

OAuthClientId: (custom applications only) Set to the Client ID in your application settings.
OAuthClientSecret: (custom applications only) Set to the Client Secret in your application settings.

When you connect, the driver opens the OAuth endpoint in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions to the application. The driver then completes the OAuth process as follows:

Web Applications

When connecting via a web application, you need to register a custom OAuth application with Act-On. See Creating a Custom OAuth App for more information. You can then use the driver to get and manage the OAuth token values.

First, get an OAuthAccessToken by setting the following connection properties:

OAuthClientId: Set to the client Id in your application settings.
OAuthClientSecret: Set to the client secret in your application settings.

Then call stored procedures to complete the OAuth exchange:

Call the GetOAuthAuthorizationURL stored procedure. Set the CallbackURL input to the callback URL you specified in your application settings. If necessary, set the Scope parameter to request custom permissions. The stored procedure returns the URL of the OAuth endpoint.
Open the URL, log in, and authorize the application. You are redirected back to the callback URL.
Call the GetOAuthAccessToken stored procedure. Set the AuthMode input to WEB. Set the Verifier input to the "code" parameter in the query string of the callback URL. If necessary, set the Scope parameter to request custom permissions.

After you have obtained the access and refresh tokens, you can connect to data and refresh the OAuth access token either automatically or manually.

Automatic Refresh of the OAuth Access Token

To have the driver automatically refresh the OAuth access token, set the following on the first data connection:

InitiateOAuth: Set this to REFRESH.
OAuthClientId: Set this to the client Id in your application settings.
OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret in your application settings.
OAuthAccessToken: Set this to the access token returned by GetOAuthAccessToken.
OAuthRefreshToken: Set this to the refresh token returned by GetOAuthAccessToken.
OAuthSettingsLocation: Set this to the location where the driver saves the OAuth token values, which persist across connections.

On subsequent data connections, the values for OAuthAccessToken and OAuthRefreshToken are taken from OAuthSettingsLocation.

Manual Refresh of the OAuth Access Token

The only value needed to manually refresh the OAuth access token when connecting to data is the OAuth refresh token.

Use the RefreshOAuthAccessToken stored procedure to manually refresh the OAuthAccessToken after the ExpiresIn parameter value returned by GetOAuthAccessToken has elapsed, then set the following connection properties:

OAuthClientId: Set this to the client Id in your application settings.
OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret in your application settings.

Then call RefreshOAuthAccessToken with OAuthRefreshToken set to the OAuth refresh token returned by GetOAuthAccessToken. After the new tokens have been retrieved, open a new connection by setting the OAuthAccessToken property to the value returned by RefreshOAuthAccessToken.

Finally, store the OAuth refresh token so that you can use it to manually refresh the OAuth access token after it has expired.

Headless Machines

To configure the driver to use OAuth with a user account on a headless machine, you need to authenticate on another device that has an internet browser.

Choose one of two options:
- Option 1: Obtain the OAuthVerifier value as described in "Obtain and Exchange a Verifier Code" below.
- Option 2: Install the driver on a machine with a browser and transfer the OAuth authentication values after you authenticate through the usual browser-based flow, as described in "Transfer OAuth Settings" below.
Then configure the driver to automatically refresh the access token on the headless machine.

Option 1: Obtain and Exchange a Verifier Code

To obtain a verifier code, you must authenticate at the OAuth authorization URL.

Follow the steps below to authenticate from the machine with an internet browser and obtain the OAuthVerifier connection property.

Choose one of these options:
- If you are using the Embedded OAuth Application click Act-On OAuth endpoint to open the endpoint in your browser.
- If you are using a Custom OAuthd Application, create the Authorization URL by setting the following properties:
  - InitiateOAuth: Set to OFF.
  - OAuthClientId: Set to the client Id assigned when you registered your application.
  - OAuthClientSecret: Set to the client secret assigned when you registered your application.
  Then call the GetOAuthAuthorizationURL stored procedure with the appropriate CallbackURL. Open the URL returned by the stored procedure in a browser.
Log in and grant permissions to the driver. You are then redirected to the callback URL, which contains the verifier code.
Save the value of the verifier code. Later you will set this in the OAuthVerifier connection property.

Next, you need to exchange the OAuth verifier code for OAuth refresh and access tokens. Set the following properties:

On the headless machine, set the following connection properties to obtain the OAuth authentication values.

InitiateOAuth: Set this to REFRESH.
OAuthVerifier: Set this to the verifier code.
OAuthClientId: (custom applications only) Set this to the client Id in your custom OAuth application settings.
OAuthClientSecret: (custom applications only) Set this to the client secret in the custom OAuth application settings.
OAuthSettingsLocation: Set this to persist the encrypted OAuth authentication values to the specified location.

After the OAuth settings file is generated, you need to re-set the following properties to connect:

InitiateOAuth: Set this to REFRESH.
OAuthClientId: (custom applications only) Set this to the client Id assigned when you registered your application.
OAuthClientSecret: (custom applications only) Set this to the client secret assigned when you registered your application.
OAuthSettingsLocation: Set this to the location containing the encrypted OAuth authentication values. Make sure this location gives read and write permissions to the driver to enable the automatic refreshing of the access token.

Option 2: Transfer OAuth Settings

Prior to connecting on a headless machine, you need to install and create a connection with the driver on a device that supports an internet browser. Set the connection properties as described in "Desktop Applications" above.

After completing the instructions in "Desktop Applications", the resulting authentication values are encrypted and written to the location specified by OAuthSettingsLocation. The default filename is OAuthSettings.txt.

After you have successfully tested the connection, copy the OAuth settings file to your headless machine.

On the headless machine, set the following connection properties to connect to data:

InitiateOAuth: Set this to REFRESH.
OAuthClientId: (custom applications only) Set this to the client Id assigned when you registered your application.
OAuthClientSecret: (custom applications only) Set this to the client secret assigned when you registered your application.
OAuthSettingsLocation: Set this to the location of your OAuth settings file. Make sure this location gives read and write permissions to the driver to enable the automatic refreshing of the access token.

Password Grant Authentication

When there is a trust relationship between the user and the application, the user can use the Password grant type to authenticate from either a Desktop application or the web. To enable this authscheme, set AuthScheme to OAuthPassword.

Authentication by password grant is similar to OAuth -- in fact, it requires that you have already set up a custom OAuth application, as described in Creating a Custom OAuth App -- but once it's set up it does not require user interaction.

To connect, set these properties:

InitiateOAuth: GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the access token in the connection string.
AuthScheme: Set the AuthScheme to OAuthPassword to perform authentication with the password grant type.
User: The Username of the user specified in your custom OAuth application.
Password: The Password of the user specified in your custom OAuth application.
OAuthClientId: The Client Id specified in your custom OAuth application.
OAuthClientSecret: The Client Secret specified in your custom OAuth application.

Refreshing OAuth Values

The driver can refresh the temporary OAuth access tokens obtained during the browser-based OAuth authentication exchange. By default, the driver saves the encrypted tokens in the odbc.ini file corresponding to the DSN. Access to this odbc.ini file can be restricted in the case of System DSNs.

To enable the automatic token exchange, you can give the driver write access to the system odbc.ini. Or, you can set the OAuthSettingsLocation connection property to an alternate file path, to which the driver would have read and write access.

    OAuthSettingsLocation=/tmp/oauthsettings.txt

Installing Dependencies for OAuth Authentication

The OAuth authentication standard requires the authenticating user to interact with Act-On, using a web-browser. If the first OAuth interaction is to be done on the same machine the driver is installed on, for example, a desktop application, the driver needs access to the xdg-open program, which opens the default browser.

To satisfy this dependency, install the corresponding package with your package manager:


Debian/Ubuntu Package	RHEL/Fedora Package	File
xdg-utils	xdg-utils	xdg-open

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-acton/lib/cdata.odbc.acton.ini':

[Driver]
AnsiCodePage = 932

ODBC Driver for Act-On