Database Connector Deployment Overview

The following procedure outlines the steps required to deploy the Database connector. The steps indicate the order in which to perform required and optional configuration tasks.

1. Validate that your environment meets the requirements (see Database Connector Requirements).

2. In your DBMS, select or create a crawling account (user) that will be used by the CES connector. The CES connector requires a Full Read DBMS account that is able to read all tables referred to in the mapping file. Refer to the documentation specific to your DBMS.

   A best practice is to create a fixed password account that is used exclusively by the Coveo connector.

3. Create a configuration file

   You must create a configuration file that instructs the connector how to crawl the database for a given source. You can either create a configuration file from scratch or customize the provided sample file (see Indexing a Database Using a Configuration File).

4. On the Coveo server, in the Coveo Administration Tool:

   1. Optionally create a CES database user identity

      When you want to hide the account credentials in the database connection string, you can configure a user identity using the credentials of the crawling account that you selected or created in Step 2 (see Adding a User Identity) and use tokens in the database connection string (see Replacing the Identity in Database Connection Strings).

   2. Optionally create security providers

      When you want to index database permissions, you must create two security providers to get database group definition permissions (if any) and resolve and expand groups.

      1. Start by selecting or creating a security provider that the Database security provider will use to resolve and expand groups. The security provider type to use depends on how users are authenticated when they access your Coveo search interface:

         Note: CES 7.0.7.0.8850+ (March 2017) You may require to also use a REGEX Transform Member Name security provider in between the two following security providers to map member types (see Configuring a REGEX Transformation Security Provider). Contact Coveo Support for assistance.

         • CES 7.0.7.0.8850+ (March 2017) When authenticated with their email address, use an Email security provider (see Configuring an Email Security Provider).

         • When authenticated with an Active Directory account, use an Active Directory security provider (see Configuring an Active Directory Security Provider).

           Notes:

           • CES comes with an Active Directory security provider that you can configure to connect to the default domain. When your environment contains more than one domain, you can select an Active Directory security provider that you created for other domains.

           • An Active Directory security provider is appropriate only when the User Principal Name (UPN) matches the email address for all users.

      2. Then create a Database security provider that the connector uses to resolve indexed permissions (see Configuring a Database Security Provider).

   3. Configure and index the Database source

      The connector must know details about the database to index its content (see Configuring and Indexing a Database Source).

   4. Optionally, use paged query execution

      If you encounter time out or performance issues, consider using paged queries to try resolving the issues (see Enabling Paged Query Execution for the Database Connector).

   5. Optionally, customize the configuration file to fine-tune indexed content

      Once your Database source is up and running, you can customize the configuration file of the connector to fine-tune the indexed content or index other tables in your DBMS (see Example of a Configuration File for the Database Connector and Additional XML Attributes).