How to Set Up and Configure the Amazon S3 Connector

Connection Configuration Specifics

Amazon S3 Connector has to option to choose between web services depending on the content you are crawling.

After installation, when configuring the Connection Connection defines the how Connectivity Hub connects to your Source System (which contains your documents, graphics, etc.,). Your Connection includes identifying elements such as: URL of the BA Insight web service connector you are using, (File Share connector, SharePoint Online connector, etc.), Authentication mode, User Accounts and Credentials, Database information (for database connectors) you see a drop-down menu with the options:

• Basic indexing
• Related documents indexing
  

Basic Indexing

Amazon S3 log in details:

• Login: 
  • If using the Amazon S3 authentication:
    • Provide the Amazon S3 Access Key ID 
  • If using an external provider:
    • Check with the provider for the appropriate login/user/account data to provide.
    • Example: var username = amazonConnectionConfigurationInfo.AccessTokenInfo.AccessKeyId;
• Password:
  • If using the Amazon S3 authentication:
    • Provide the Amazon S3 Secret Access Key
  • If using an external provider:
    • Check with the provider for the appropriate password/secret data to provide
    • Example: var pass = amazonConnectionConfigurationInfo.AccessTokenInfo.SecretAccessKey;

Parameters

Basic indexing allows the following parameters in the Amazon S3 Connection Parameters field:

• <Bucket>
  • Required
  • The Amazon AWS bucket to be crawled
• <UseExternalCredentialsProvider>
  • Optional
  • Default value: false
  • Set to true if you wish to use an external service to authenticate
  • If set to true, you must provide the URL of the external service for authentication
    • See the following config.xml code for an example:
      
    Copy

    <configuration>
        <UseTemporaryCredentials>false</UseTemporaryCredentials>
        <UseExternalCredentialsProvider>true</UseExternalCredentialsProvider>
        <ExternalCredentialsProviderUrl>http://www.sampleURL.com</ExternalCredentialsProviderUrl>
        <CredentialsRoleARN></CredentialsRoleARN>
        <DefaultProxy></DefaultProxy>
    </configuration>

  • This service should return a set of temporary AWS credentials (key, secret key and session token) - optional
• <UseTemporaryCredentials>
  • Optional
  • Set this parameter to true if you wish to authenticate in Amazon S3 source system Your Source System is the repository where your data is stored (data to be indexed). This repository is managed by applications such as: - SharePoint O365 - SharePoint 2013/16/19 - Documentum - File Share - OpenText - Lotus Notes - etc. Your Source System repository can also be a database such as SQL or Oracle. with temporary credentials.
• <CredentialRoleARN>:
  • If <UseTemporaryCredentials> is true, you may also provide an Amazon role to be used for authentication.
  • The permissions set for this role are used further on.
• <AWS Region>:
  • Region of the bucket to be crawled.
  • The default is USEast1

Example With External Authentication Service

<configuration>
   <Bucket>Mytestbucket1</Bucket>
   <UseExternalCredentialsProvider>true</UseExternalCredentialsProvider>
   <ExternalCredentialsProviderUrl>
      http://MyExternalAuthProviderURL
   </ExternalCredentialsProviderUrl>
</configuration>

Related Documents Indexing

This sub connector handles the scenario where multiple files stored in the same bucket should be indexed as a single item.

• For instance, a contract and its addendums should be indexed together.

The above configuration details for Basic Indexing also apply to Related Documents Indexing. 

• You must provide additional information in the Related Documents Pattern field

• When using this mode, you can specify any combination of the following types of files:

  • Binary content:
    • This file is sent as-is to the search index Contains data from your source system. Your search application instance (Elasticsearch, SharePoint Online, etc.) contains the search indexes. One search index per content source. for instance
  • Metadata Provides context with details such as the source, type, owner, and relationships to other data sets. Metadata provides details around the item being crawled by Connectivity Hub. file:
    • This file is understood as an XML file containing metadata about the item to index.
    • Its content is read by the connector and every XML element is returned as a list of properties for the current item index
  • DocumentUrls:
    • The file is understood as a text file with each line being a URL

In order for Amazon to know that documents are related to each other, a pattern has to be provided and the documents in the AWS bucket have to respect this pattern in their naming.

Example

<relateddocumentspattern>
   <binarycontent>
      <![CDATA[(?<filename>.*).(?<extension>pdf|docx|pptx)]]>
   </binarycontent>
   <documenturls>
      <![CDATA[(?<filename>.*_URLs).(?<extension>txt)]]>
   </documenturls>
   <documentmetadata>
      <![CDATA[(?<filename>.*).(?<extension>xml)]]>
   </documentmetadata>
</relateddocumentspattern>

Content Configuration Specifics

Amazon S3 has a flat structure with no hierarchy like you would see in a typical file system.

For the sake of organizational simplicity, the Amazon S3 console supports the folder concept as a means of grouping objects.

• Amazon S3 does this by using key name prefixes for objects.

• Amazon S3 Connector supports this structure with the use of filters on content