Create an Azure Blob source connection in the UI

This tutorial provides steps for creating an Azure Blob (hereinafter referred to as “Blob”) using the Platform user interface.

Getting started

This tutorial requires a working understanding of the following components of Adobe Experience Platform:

If you already have a valid Blob connection, you may skip the remainder of this document and proceed to the tutorial on configuring a dataflow.

Supported file formats

Experience Platform supports the following file formats to be ingested from external storages:

  • Delimiter-separated values (DSV): Support for DSV formatted data files is currently limited to comma-separated values. The value of field headers within DSV formatted files must only consist of alphanumeric characters and underscores. Support for general DSV files will be provided in the future.
  • JavaScript Object Notation (JSON): JSON formatted data files must be XDM compliant.
  • Apache Parquet: Parquet formatted data files must be XDM compliant.

Gather required credentials

In order to access your Blob storage on Platform, you must provide a valid value for the following credential:

Credential Description
connectionString A string that contains the authorization information necessary to authenticate Blob to Experience Platform. The Blob connection string pattern is: DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName={ACCOUNT_NAME};AccountKey={ACCOUNT_KEY}. For more information about connection strings, see this Blob document on configuring connection strings.
sasUri The shared access signature URI that you can use as an alternative authentication type to connect your Blob account. The Blob SAS URI pattern is: https://{ACCOUNT_NAME}.blob.core.windows.net/?sv=<storage version>&st={START_TIME}&se={EXPIRE_TIME}&sr={RESOURCE}&sp={PERMISSIONS}>&sip=<{IP_RANGE}>&spr={PROTOCOL}&sig={SIGNATURE}> For more information, see this Blob document on shared access signature URIs.

Connect your Blob account

Once you have gathered your required credentials, you can follow the steps below to link your Blob account to Platform.

In the Platform UI, select Sources from the left navigation bar to access the Sources workspace. The Catalog screen displays a variety of sources for which you can create an account with.

You can select the appropriate category from the catalog on the left-hand side of your screen. Alternatively, you can find the specific source you wish to work with using the search bar.

Under the Cloud storage category, select Azure Blob Storage, and then select Add data.

catalog

The Connect to Azure Blob Storage page appears. On this page, you can either use new credentials or existing credentials.

Existing account

To use an existing account, select the Blob account you want to create a new dataflow with, then select Next to proceed.

existing

New account

If you are creating a new account, select New account, and then provide a name and an option description for your new Blob account.

Authenticate using a connection string

The Blob connector provides you with different authentication types for access. Under Account authentication select ConnectionString to use connection string-based credentials.

connection string

Authenticate using a shared access signature URI

A shared access signature (SAS) URI allows for secure delegated authorization to your Blob account. You can use SAS to create authentication credentials with varying degrees of access, as a SAS-based authentication allows you to set permissions, start and expiry dates, as well as provisions to specific resources.

Select SasURIAuthentication and then provide your Blob SAS URI. Select Connect to source to proceed.

sas-uri

Next steps

By following this tutorial, you have established a connection to your Blob account. You can now continue on to the next tutorial and configure a dataflow to bring data from your cloud storage into Platform.

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