Oracle
To add a database connection, click on the gear icon in the top right, and navigate to Admin settings > Databases > Add a database.
Settings
You can edit these settings at any time. Just remember to save your changes.
Display name
The display name for the database in the Metabase interface.
Host
Your database’s IP address, or its domain name (e.g., esc.mydatabase.com).
Port
The database port. E.g., 1521.
Oracle system ID (SID)
Usually something like ORCL or XE. Optional if using service name.
Oracle service name
Optional TNS alias.
Username
The database username for the account that you want to use to connect to your database. You can set up multiple connections to the same database using different user accounts to connect to the same database, each with different sets of privileges.
Password
The password for the username that you use to connect to the database.
Use a secure connection (SSL)
You can use both client and server authentication (known as mutual authentication).
Connecting to Oracle Cloud Autonomous Database
If you’ve configured your database to require mutual TLS (mTLS), you’ll need a wallet. To download your wallet:
- Go to your Oracle Autonomous Database.
- Go to the database’s details.
- Click on DB connection.
- Download the wallet.
- Create a password for the keyfile.
- Copy the
keystore.jksfile to wherever you store your Metabase configuration data. - Use
JAVA_OPTSto let Metabase know about the keystore’s location and password (for more info on keystores, see the next section). - In Metabase, on the data connection page, enter your
host,port, andservice_name. You can find these values in thetsnnames.orafile.
Client authentication with a keystore
To configure the server (the Oracle server) to authenticate the identity of the client (Metabase), you need to configure a keystore file that includes the client’s private key.
You’ll import the client’s private key into the keystore (rather than a root CA into a truststore file). Add the following JVM options for Metabase:
-Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=/path/to/keystore.jks
-Djavax.net.ssl.keyStoreType=JKS \
-Djavax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword=<keyStorePassword>
You can define these with the JAVA_OPTS environment variable, like so:
JAVA_OPTS: "-Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=/scripts/keystore.jks -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStoreType=JKS -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword=<keyStorePassword>"
With this done, the Oracle server will authenticate Metabase using the private key when Metabase tries to connect over SSL.
Server authentication with a truststore
To configure the client (Metabase) to authenticate the identity of the server (the Oracle server), you may need to
configure a truststore file that includes the server’s root CA, so that the JVM running Metabase trusts its
certificate chain. Refer to the
Oracle documentation on using keytool to manage key and truststore files, importing certificates, etc.
For more information on setting up a truststore for AWS RDS Oracle instances, see the instructions provided by Amazon.
If you need to connect to other databases using SSL, instead of creating a new truststore, you’ll probably want to add the RDS CA to your existing truststore file (likely called cacerts).
Supported Oracle database and Oracle driver versions
- Driver version: the minimum Oracle driver version should be 19c, regardless of which Java version or Oracle database version you have.
- Database version: the minimum database version should be version 19c, as Oracle no longer supports database versions prior to 19.
Downloading the Oracle JDBC Driver JAR
You can download a JDBC driver from Oracle’s JDBC driver downloads page.
We recommend using the ojdbc8.jar JAR.
Adding the Oracle JDBC Driver JAR to the Metabase plugins directory
In your Metabase directory (the directory where you keep and run your metabase.jar), create a directory called plugins (if it doesn’t already exist.
Move the JAR you just downloaded (ojdbc8.jar) into the plugins directory, and restart Metabase. Metabase will automatically make the Oracle driver available when it starts back up.
When running from a JAR
By default, the plugins directory is called plugins, and lives in the same directory as the Metabase JAR.
For example, if you’re running Metabase from a directory called /app/, you should move the Oracle JDBC driver JAR to /app/plugins/:
# example directory structure for running Metabase with Oracle support
/app/metabase.jar
/app/plugins/ojdbc8.jar
When running from Docker
The process for adding plugins when running via Docker is similar, but you’ll need to mount the plugins directory. Refer to instructions here for more details.
Further reading
Read docs for other versions of Metabase.