Use Alteryx Generic OAuth feature to securely authenticate to Databricks on AWS

[renat_isch]

Alteryx Designer 2023.2 release introduces Generic OAuth2 authentication method support for a number of data sources. This authentication method, allows our users leverage OAuth2-based authentication to provide seamless authentication experience without comprising on security. With this feature, our users can use an identity provider of their choice, integrate it with the data source and use IdP issued identities to setup connections from Alteryx Designer. Complete list of data sources supporting this authentication method can be found in Designer 2023.2 version release notes.

This post demonstrates how Generic OAuth authentication method can be used to setup OAuth-based authentication for Databricks running on AWS.

Please note, the following example is intended for demonstration purposes only. We recommend engaging your systems team to help you with the configuration. This example cover User-to-Machine OAuth.

• This is also known as User-to-machine (U2M) authentication.
  U2M interactions in Databricks DBSQL API involve users working directly with the API to perform tasks such as executing SQL queries, managing clusters, and creating or modifying databases and tables.

To access Databricks data on AWS using Generic OAuth authentication, users are required to have the following configuration in place:

• Register an OAuth application in Databricks Account on AWS;
• Obtain authentication details required to setup a new connection between Alteryx Designer and Databricks;
• Setup a new connection with Databricks;

If you don’t know where to find these details, don’t worry as below we provide a step-by-step instructions. 

Register an OAuth application in Databricks Account on AWS

To register a new OAuth application, Databricks provides Admin rest API for registering an OAuth application. To authenticate to the Account API, you can use Databricks OAuth tokens for service principals or an account admin’s username and password. Please note, Databricks strongly recommends that you use OAuth tokens for service principals. A service principal is an identity that you create in Databricks for use with automated tools, jobs, and applications. To create an OAuth token, see Authentication using OAuth tokens for service principals. Once you have generated a new OAuth token for service principal, pass the token in the header to “enrolment” endpoint to enable OAuth on your account.

curl -X POST https://accounts.cloud.databricks.com/api/2.0/accounts/<Databricks account ID>/oauth2/enrollment 
\ --header "Authorization: Bearer $OAUTH_TOKEN"

This verify OAuth has been enabled for your Databricks instance run the following request

curl -X GET
https://accounts.cloud.databricks.com/api/2.0/accounts/<Databricks account
ID>/oauth2/enrollment \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $OAUTH_TOKEN"

This request shall return the following response

{"is_enabled":true}

Once you’ve confirmed OAuth has been enabled for your Databricks instance, you may need a few minutes before registering a newOAuth client.

To register a new OAuth client, run the following request: 

curl -X POST -d '{ "redirect_urls" : [ "<Redirect URL>" ], "confidential" :
   true|false, "name" : "<Name>" }'
   https://accounts.cloud.databricks.com/api/2.0/accounts/<AccountID>/oauth2/c
   ustom-app-integrations --header "Authorization: Bearer $OAUTH_TOKEN"

The following values shall be passed to the request:

• redirect_urls - ['http://localhost:5000'];
• confidential - ‘true’ if you need OAuth client secret, otherwise set this value to ‘false’;;
• name - name of your OAuth client;
• scopes - supported scopes;
• AccountID - Databricks accountID

Below is request body example

{ 
"redirect_urls":["http://localhost:5000"], 
"confidential":true, 
"name":"oauth client2", 
"scopes":"all-apis"
}

This request will register the oauth-app and generate a new OAuth client_id and ,in case you set confidential to true, new client_secret. Collect and store these details, you will need them later in the process.

Obtain authentication details required to setup a new connection between Alteryx Designer and Databricks

To setup a new connection to Databricks with Generic OAuth2 authentication method, you need to collect the following detais:

• Authentication endpoint
• Token endpoint
• scope
• client_id
• client_secret (optional)

In previous step, we’ve already collected client_id and client_secret. In this step, let’s collect authentication and token endpoint details. To find your instance authentication and token details, you can use Databricks OpenId .well-known endpoint.

Make a GET request to the following endpoint, replacing databricks host value with your Databricks host.

https://{databricks-host}/oidc/.well-known/openid-configuration

In response, you should get a json structure listing your authentication and token endpoints. For example:

{
  "authorization_endpoint":"https:\/\/dbc-938d9d6e-0fb3.cloud.databricks.com\/oidc\/v1\/authorize",
  "token_endpoint":"https:\/\/dbc-938d9d6e-0fb3.cloud.databricks.com\/oidc\/v1\/token",
  "issuer":"https:\/\/dbc-938d9d6e-0fb3.cloud.databricks.com\/oidc",
  "jwks_uri":"https:\/\/accounts.cloud.databricks.com\/oidc\/jwks.json",
  "scopes_supported":["offline_access","all-apis"],
  "response_types_supported":["code","token"],
  "response_modes_supported":["query","fragment"],
  "grant_types_supported":["client_credentials","authorization_code","refresh_token"],
  "code_challenge_methods_supported":["S256"],
  "token_endpoint_auth_methods_supported":["client_secret_basic","client_secret_post","none"]
}

Collect and store values of authorization and token endpoints. Please also note the scopes enabled for this application. We’ll need both “offline access“ and “all-apis” for this tutorial.

Let’s recap, by now we’ve enabled OAuth authentication for our Databricks instance, created a new OAuth client and collected required details. Let’s move on and finally connect to our Databricks instance.

Setup a new connection to Databricks

To access data in Databricks from Alteryx Designer, add input or output tool, check “Use Data Connection Manager (DCM)” box and select Databricks or Databricks Unity Catalog from the list of available data sources in Alteryx Designer. Select Quick Connect, provide your Databricks instance details. 

Next, create new credential and select Generic OAuth2 authentication method. Fill our required details providing authentication and token endpoints, OAuth redirect port, we configured it in redirect_uri when creating the application to be 5000, client_id, client_secret (optional) and save the connection.

Next, click on create new credentials. Provide a name for this credentials, and specify the scopes we collected earlier followed by the space. E.g. “all-apis offline_access”

 After filling out above details and clicking connect, you will be redirected to the Databricks login page. You will be prompted to login with your Databricks user account. Once done, you will be able to explore your Databricks data.