Installing the CONNECT Storage Engine

The CONNECT storage engine enables MariaDB to access external local or remote data (MED). This is done by defining tables based on different data types, in particular files in various formats, data extracted from other DBMS or products (such as Excel or MongoDB) via ODBC or JDBC, or data retrieved from the environment (for example DIR, WMI, and MAC tables)

This storage engine supports table partitioning, MariaDB virtual columns and permits defining special columns such as ROWID, FILEID, and SERVID.

The storage engine must be installed before it can be used.

Installing the Plugin's Package

The CONNECT storage engine's shared library is included in MariaDB packages as the ha_connect.so or ha_connect.so shared library on systems where it can be built.

Installing on Linux

The CONNECT storage engine is included in binary tarballs on Linux.

Installing with a Package Manager

The CONNECT storage engine can also be installed via a package manager on Linux. In order to do so, your system needs to be configured to install from one of the MariaDB repositories.

You can configure your package manager to install it from MariaDB Corporation's MariaDB Package Repository by using the MariaDB Package Repository setup script.

You can also configure your package manager to install it from MariaDB Foundation's MariaDB Repository by using the MariaDB Repository Configuration Tool.

Installing with yum/dnf

On RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, and other similar Linux distributions, it is highly recommended to install the relevant RPM package from MariaDB's repository using yum or dnf. Starting with RHEL 8 and Fedora 22, yum has been replaced by dnf, which is the next major version of yum. However, yum commands still work on many systems that use dnf. For example:

sudo yum install MariaDB-connect-engine

Installing with apt-get

On Debian, Ubuntu, and other similar Linux distributions, it is highly recommended to install the relevant DEB package from MariaDB's repository using apt-get. For example:

sudo apt-get install mariadb-plugin-connect

Installing with zypper

On SLES, OpenSUSE, and other similar Linux distributions, it is highly recommended to install the relevant RPM package from MariaDB's repository using zypper. For example:

sudo zypper install MariaDB-connect-engine

Installing the Plugin

Once the shared library is in place, the plugin is not actually installed by MariaDB by default. There are two methods that can be used to install the plugin with MariaDB.

The first method can be used to install the plugin without restarting the server. You can install the plugin dynamically by executing INSTALL SONAME or INSTALL PLUGIN. For example:

INSTALL SONAME 'ha_connect';

The second method can be used to tell the server to load the plugin when it starts up. The plugin can be installed this way by providing the --plugin-load or the --plugin-load-add options. This can be specified as a command-line argument to mysqld or it can be specified in a relevant server option group in an option file. For example:

[mariadb]
...
plugin_load_add = ha_connect

Uninstalling the Plugin

You can uninstall the plugin dynamically by executing UNINSTALL SONAME or UNINSTALL PLUGIN. For example:

UNINSTALL SONAME 'ha_connect';

If you installed the plugin by providing the --plugin-load or the --plugin-load-add options in a relevant server option group in an option file, then those options should be removed to prevent the plugin from being loaded the next time the server is restarted.

Installing Dependencies

The CONNECT storage engine has some external dependencies.

Installing unixODBC

The CONNECT storage engine requires an ODBC library. On Unix-like systems, that usually means installing unixODBC. On some systems, this is installed as the unixODBC package. For example:

sudo yum install unixODBC

On other systems, this is installed as the libodbc1 package. For example:

sudo apt-get install libodbc1

If you do not have the ODBC library installed, then you may get an error about a missing library when you attempt to install the plugin. For example:

INSTALL SONAME 'ha_connect';
ERROR 1126 (HY000): Can't open shared library '/home/ian/MariaDB_Downloads/10.1.17/lib/plugin/ha_connect.so' 
  (errno: 2, libodbc.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)