Adapters

Adapters are proxy-like services that are used by SGNL to communicate to their respective Systems of Record. The figure above depicts where adapters are placed in the ingestion flow from the SoRs to the SGNL platform. Adapters communicate with SoR APIs in a protocol the SoR supports and retrieve data about resources and their attributes. The received response from the SoR is transformed to a SGNL format that allows it to ingest data from the SoR into the SGNL graph. There are two types of adapters: Standard and Custom

Standard Adapters

These are adapters developed and maintained by SGNL for the most common Systems of Record that SGNL supports. These are available for use in all SGNL clients. You can view the list of available adapters by navigating to Admin->Adapters in the Standard Adapters tab.

Custom Adapters

These are adapters built by users to support their proprietary/custom Systems of Record. Users are responsible for developing, managing and maintaining these adapters. Each SGNL client’s adapters are unique to the client and are not visible or usable to other SGNL clients. You can view the list of configured custom adapters by navigating to Admin->Adapters in the Custom Adapters tab.

Creating a Custom Adapter

1. Login into the SGNL Console

2. From the left navigation pane, click on Admin

3. Click on Adapters, which will take you to the Adapters view

   

4. Click on +Add Adapter and add the following information:

   

   • Name: Name of the Adapter
   • Description: An optional description
   • Hostname: The Adapter hostname. The address must be reachable from SGNL.
   • Port: The port number on which the adapter is listening
   • Type: The System of Record Type. The format is {SoR Name}-{version number}. SemVer 2.0.0 versioning specification is followed for the version number. SoR type is covered in greater detail in one of the sections below.
   • Authentication Token: This is a token that is used by the adapter to authenticate SGNL. This token is sent by SGNL to the adapter in every gRPC call requesting data from the System of Record. Max length of the token is 1024 characters.
   • Supported Auth Mechanisms: The authentication mechanisms the SoR supports that are also supported by the adapter. For example, if the SoR supports all three authentication mechanisms for its API, the adapter may support only OAuth2 Client Credentials.
   • API Version: This is an optional advanced setting. It is the gRPC API version used by SGNL to communicate with the adapter. Normally, the user will not have to concern themselves with updating this field unless there are multiple adapters in use that support different API versions.
   • Server Certificate: This is an optional advanced setting and used by the SGNL to affirm the identity of the adapter and establish a TLS channel with it.

5. Click on Save

Configuring Systems of Record to use Adapters

System of Record Type

When creating an adapter, a System of Record type must be specified as shown in the section above. Adapters are configured/implemented to use particular Systems of Record functionality, and SGNL classifies the different versions of Systems of Record supported by adapters into types. SoR types are based on the SoR API version being used by the adapter, the supported authentication mechanisms, and entities and attributes supported in the adaper. For instance, Salesforce supports various API versions with possibly different resources available in different versions. In such cases, the configured Salesforce SoR must use an adapter version that uses the right version of the Salesforce API and implements querying of the resources supported by that API version.

Using Adapters

On any create or update SoR page, you will be able to see the list of all adapter types available to use for the SoR. Make sure to use an adapter with the right SoR type as indicated by name and version.