Connecting to the database

Last update: April 11, 2024

To enable a connection to the external database, you must indicate the connection parameters, i.e. the targeted data source and the name of the table with data requiring loading.

CAUTION
The Adobe Campaign user needs specific rights for the external database and the Adobe Campaign application server to process data from an external database. For more on this, refer to the Remote database access rights section.
To avoid any malfunction, operators who access remote shared data must be working from separate spaces.

Creating a shared connection

To enable a connection to a shared external database, as long as this connection is active, the database can be accessed via Adobe Campaign.

  1. The configuration must be defined beforehand via the Administration > Platform > External accounts node.

  2. Click the New button and select the External database type.

  3. Define the Connection parameters of the external database.

    For connections to an ODBC type database the Server field must contain the name of the ODBC data source and not the server name. Moreover, certain additional configurations may be necessary depending on the databases used. Refer to the Specific configurations by database type section.

  4. Once the parameters are entered, click the Test the connection button to approve them.

  5. If necessary, uncheck the Enabled option to disable access to this database without deleting its configuration.

  6. To allow Adobe Campaign to access this database, you must deploy the SQL functions. Click the Parameters tab then the Deploy functions button.

You can define specific work tablespaces for the tables and for the index in the Parameters tab.

Creating a temporary connection

You can directly define a connection to an external database from workflow activities. In this case, it will be on a local external database, reserved to be used within a current workflow: it will not be saved on the external accounts. This type of punctual connection can be created on different activities of the workflow, particularly the Query, the Data loading (RDBMS), the Enrichment activity or the Split activity.

CAUTION
This type of configuration is not recommended but may be used periodically to collect data. Nevertheless, you should create an external account, as presented in the Creating a shared connection section.

For example, in the query activity, the steps for creating a periodic connection to an external database are as follows:

  1. Click the Add data… and select the External data options.

  2. Select the Locally defining the data source option.

  3. Select the target database engine in the drop-down list. Enter the name of the server and provide the authentication parameters.

    Also specify the name of the external database.

    Click the Next button.

  4. Select the table where the data is stored.

    You can enter the name of the table directly in the corresponding field or click the edit icon to access the list of the database tables.

  5. Click the Add button to define one or several reconciliation fields between the external database data and the data in the Adobe Campaign database. The Edit expression icons of the Remote field and Local field gives you access to the list of fields of each of the tables.

  6. If necessary, specify a filtering condition and the data sorting mode.

  7. Select the additional data to be collected in the external database. To do this, double click on the fields(s) that you want to add to display them in the Output columns.

    Click Finish to confirm this configuration.