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‣ DBSchema

📖 Reference Documentations and resources
  1. 📖 Astra Docs - Reference documentation
  2. DBSchema Tutorials

Overview

DbSchema is a universal database designer for out-of-the-box schema management and documentation, sharing the schema in the team, and deploying on different databases. Visual tools can help developers, database administrators, and decision-makers to query, explore and manage the data.

DBSchema uses the Simba JDBC driver to connect to Cassandra as the storage backend. The Java driver itself supports connections to Astra DB natively.

Prerequisites

This article assumes you have installed the latest version of DBSchema on your laptop or PC.

Installation and Setup

✅ Step 1: JDBC Driver

Download the JDBC driver from the DataStax website:

  1. Go to https://downloads.datastax.com/#odbc-jdbc-drivers.
  2. Select Simba JDBC Driver for Apache Cassandra.
  3. Select JDBC 4.2.
  4. Read the license terms and accept it (click the checkbox).
  5. Hit the blue Download button.
  6. Once the download completes, unzip the downloaded file.

✅ Step 2: Establish the Connection

  1. Open DB Schema
  2. Select Connect to the Database
  3. Select Start

  4. In the Choose your database menu, select Cassandra.

  5. Select Next.

  6. Select JDBC Driver edit option.

  7. In the JDBC Driver Manager, select New.

  8. In the Add RDBMS window, enter Astra and select OK

  9. Select OK in the confirmation message.

  10. Upload the Simba JDBC Driver.

  11. Select Open

  12. Once you upload the Simba JDBC Driver, you will see Astra in the Choose your Database window. Select Next.

  13. In the Astra Connection Dialog, add JDBC URL as

    jdbc:cassandra://;AuthMech=<2>;UID=token;PWD=<ApplicationToken>;SecureConnectionBundlePath=<PATH TO YOUR SECURE CONNECT BUNDLE>;TunableConsistency=<6>
    
    with the following variables:

    • AuthMech: Specifies whether the driver connects to a Cassandra or Astra DB database and whether the driver authenticates the connection.
    • ApplicationToken: Generated from Astra DB console. See Manage application tokens.
    • SecureConnectionBundlePath: Path to where your downloaded Secure Connect Bundle is located. See Get secure connect bundle.
    • TunableConsistency: Specifies Cassandra replica or the number of Cassandra replicas that must process a query for the query to be considered successful.
  14. Select Connect

  15. In the Select Schemas/Catalogs, select the keyspace to which you want to connect.

  16. Select OK.

✅ Step 3: Final Test

Now that your connection is working, you can create tables, introspect your keyspaces, view your data in the DBSchema GUI, and more.

To learn more about DBSchema, see Quick start with DBSchema


Last update: 2022-10-27