External Access to Data Fabric

Appian's data fabric unifies and optimizes your enterprise data so you can build secure, data-driven applications. You can extend the power of the data fabric beyond the Appian platform by enabling external access to your synced record types.

By exposing your data fabric through industry-standard drivers and protocols, you can power external BI tools like Tableau and Power BI, feed data engineering pipelines, and provide high-performance context to AI agents.

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Appian uses Apache Arrow Flight SQL as its external access protocol. Because this is an open standard, you connect using generic, community-supported drivers—not Appian-specific ones. The following driver types are supported:

• Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)
• Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)
• Apache Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC)

Why use external access to data fabric

Enabling external access to your data fabric allows Appian to serve as a high-performance data provider for your entire technology ecosystem.

When you make a synced record type available for external access, you can support the following enterprise use cases:

• Business intelligence: Use your unified data fabric in external BI tools like Power BI or Tableau to expand your existing real-time reporting capabilities.
• Data science and engineering: Access a unified enterprise data model to simplify data preparation and movement in data science and engineering workflows.
• Software development: Use your data fabric to simplify integrating, optimizing, and scaling access to enterprise data in external applications and software systems.

While you use your data fabric in external systems, Appian provides the same security and performance you experience in your applications:

• Enterprise-grade security: Appian automatically applies existing record type security, record-level security, and field-level security to every external query.
• High-performance architecture: External access to data fabric delivers large datasets with minimal latency and high efficiency, optimized for AI and analytics workloads.

Beta program overview

The beta program for external access to data fabric allows selected customers and partners to gain hands-on experience with this functionality in a non-production environment. There is no monetary cost to participate in the external access beta program.

Beta timeline and updates

The beta for external access to data fabric began in July 2026 and runs for approximately 4 months. Appian updates beta functionality during the beta period to address critical bugs and release new capabilities. The product team shares all updates directly with beta participants.

Following the beta program, findings are posted to the Appian Community beta page.

Beta participant advantages

Participants in the external access to data fabric beta receive the following operational and technical benefits:

• Early access: Explore external access to data fabric before general availability to inform internal resource planning and process investments.
• Direct feedback channels: Influence future product investments through direct access to the Appian Product and Engineering teams.
• Skilling opportunities: Learn the software months in advance of general availability to minimize implementation timelines and maximize return on investment.
• Expert support: Access free assistance from Appian subject matter experts to advise on use cases and implementation strategies.

Beta environment considerations

Because the external access beta runs on a pre-release framework, be aware of the following environment constraints:

• No production sites or data: Cloning a production site or using production data is strictly prohibited. Appian provides a net-new site with preloaded sample data, hosted in the us-east-1 region.
• Bring your own sample data: If the preloaded dataset does not meet your needs, you can bring your own data schemas populated with synthetic or anonymized data. Do not use real production data.
• Network security: If you have strict network security requirements for integrating with your systems (such as VPN tunnels or PrivateLink endpoints), you must rebuild those configurations in the beta environment.
• Object portability: Appian does not guarantee the portability of objects from beta sites to other environments because the program uses a pre-release installer.

Beta legal agreement

All participating organizations must sign a beta agreement that is separate from any existing corporate agreements or contracts. If your organization signed a beta agreement within the last year for a different beta program, you do not need to sign the agreement again.

Beta feedback mechanism

The Appian product team meets with participants regularly (for example, 30 minutes every other week) to review feedback and answer questions. Participants must document their performance findings and technical feedback to bring to these collaborative sessions.

Requirements for external access

You must be a participant in the external access to data fabric beta program to allow external access to data fabric.

Additionally, your application must have the following objects:

• Synced record types: Only synced record types can be shared externally. Unsynced record types and legacy record types cannot be shared outside of Appian.
• Service accounts: Use a service account to authenticate external systems. Ensure the service account has at least Viewer permissions for the record types you intend to share.

Set up external access to data fabric

To allow external systems to access your data fabric:

1. Grant the service account Viewer permissions to the synced record types you want to share externally.
2. Enable external access to a record type by publishing it for analytics and AI.
3. Review the SQL reference name for each record type to ensure it is unique across the environment. External systems use the SQL reference name to query the record data.
4. Connect your external system to your data fabric using the appropriate driver.

Secure record types for service accounts

Because external systems connect to Appian using a service account, the service account must have the appropriate permissions to access your record types.

Appian enforces the following security layers whenever an external system queries a record type:

• Object security: The service account must have at least Viewer permissions for the record type. Without Viewer permissions, external systems cannot query the record type.
• Record-level security: The service account can only access the rows that its record-level security rules allow.
• Field-level security: The service account can only access the fields that its field-level security rules allow.

To grant the service account the correct permissions, add the service account to a group that has the appropriate security configurations for the record type. Assigning permissions through groups rather than directly to individual users makes it easier to manage access at scale.

Enable external access to your data fabric

Before an external system can query your data, you must publish each record type for analytics and AI.

You can enable external access to record types from the Data Governance page of Process HQ or from the record type in Appian Designer.

Enable record types from Process HQ

You can enable multiple record types for external access from the Data Governance page in Process HQ. Any configurations you make in Process HQ take precedence over individual record type configurations set in Appian Designer.

To access the Data Governance page in Process HQ, you must be in the Data Governors system group.

To enable record types for external access from Process HQ:

1. In Process HQ, go to the Data Governance page. By default, all synced and unsynced record types in your environment appear.
2. Select the checkbox for each synced record type you want to publish.
3. Click PUBLISH FOR ANALYTICS & AI.

Enable record types from Appian Designer

If you generated record types, those record types are published for analytics and AI by default. For all other record types, you must enable this setting manually.

To enable a record type for external access from Appian Designer:

1. In Appian Designer, open the record type.
2. Go to Workspaces.
3. Select the Publish for Analytics & AI checkbox.
4. Click SAVE.

Manage the SQL reference name

External systems query a record type using its SQL reference name. Appian automatically generates a unique SQL reference name for each synced record type, which serves as the table identifier in SQL queries from external systems.

If you need to customize the generated SQL reference name, you can edit the SQL reference name in the record type properties:

1. In your application, open a synced record type.
2. Click Settings > Properties.
3. In the SQL Reference Name field, enter a new name. SQL reference names must be unique across the environment.
4. Click SAVE CHANGES to close the properties.
5. Click SAVE to save the record type settings.

Connect external systems to the data fabric

Appian allows external systems to query data fabric using Apache Arrow Flight SQL, a high-performance, open-standard protocol designed for analytical data transfer. Because Appian uses this open standard, you do not need an Appian-specific driver. Instead, you connect using generic, community-supported Arrow Flight SQL drivers available from standard repositories and ecosystem partners.

Any external system that supports JDBC, ODBC, or ADBC can connect to your data fabric. Select the appropriate driver type for your tool or environment:

• JDBC: For tools like Tableau, DBeaver, and DataGrip.
• ODBC: For Windows-based tools like Power BI and Excel.
• ADBC: For Python, Pandas, Jupyter, and data science workflows.

The following sections walk through creating a web API key, downloading a driver, and connecting Power BI Desktop as a common example. The same general approach applies to any compatible external system.

Create a web API key

Before connecting any external system to your data fabric, you must create a web API key to authenticate the connection using a service account.

To create a web API key:

1. In Appian, go to the Admin Console.
2. Go to the Web API Authentication page.
3. In the API Keys tab, click CREATE to create an API key. You can use an existing service account or create a new one. The service account must have at least Viewer permissions to the record types you intend to share externally.

4. Copy the API key and store it externally.

   Caution:  Appian does not show the value of the API key again after creation. If you lose the API key, you must create a new one.

5. Click OK.

Download the required driver

Because Appian uses the open-source Apache Arrow standard, your external tools connect using generic Arrow Flight SQL drivers. Select the driver type required by your external system.

JDBC driver

The Apache Arrow project maintains the official JDBC driver. You do not need an installer—you only need the .jar file.

• Where to get it: Download the latest flight-sql-jdbc-driver-<VERSION>.jar from the Maven Central Repository.
• Installation: Place the .jar file in the designated drivers folder of your external system.

ODBC driver

For Windows-based environments, you need a system-level ODBC driver. The Arrow community and enterprise partners maintain ODBC installers for Arrow Flight SQL.

• Where to get it: Download the Arrow Flight SQL ODBC driver provided by Dremio.
• Installation: Run the .msi or .exe installer to register the Arrow Flight SQL driver in your Windows ODBC Data Source Administrator.

ADBC driver

If you are programmatically accessing your data fabric, you can bypass JDBC and ODBC entirely. Use Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC) to stream data directly into Apache Arrow tables or Pandas DataFrames with no serialization overhead.

• Where to get it: Available through standard Python package managers.

• Installation: Run the following command in your terminal or virtual environment:

  1
    pip install adbc-driver-flightsql
  

Connect Power BI Desktop to the data fabric

Power BI Desktop can connect to your data fabric using an ODBC driver.

Once you create a web API key and download the ODBC driver, you can follow these steps to connect Power BI to your data fabric.

Configure the ODBC data source

To configure the ODBC data source:

1. From the Start Menu on your device, search for ODBC Data Sources (64-bit).
2. Go to the System DSN tab.
3. Click Add.
4. In the Create New Data Source dialog, select the Arrow Flight SQL ODBC driver and click Finish.

5. In the Configure Apache Arrow Flight SQL dialog, configure the following properties:

   Property	Action
   Host Name	Enter the environment name where your data fabric resides followed by -sqlapi . For example, if the environment is data-fabric-test.appiancloud.com, then the host name is data-fabric-test-sqlapi.appiancloud.com.
   Port	Enter 443.
   Authentication Type	Select Token Authentication.
   Authentication Token	Paste the API key you created earlier.

   Note:  The -sqlapi host name format applies to all driver types, not just ODBC.

6. In the Configure Apache Arrow Flight SQL dialog, go to the Advanced tab.
7. Verify the Use Encryption checkbox is selected.
8. Click OK to close the Configure Apache Arrow Flight SQL dialog.
9. Click OK to close the ODBC Data Source (64-bit) dialog.

Connect Power BI Desktop to the ODBC data source

To use Appian as a data source in Power BI Desktop:

1. Open Power BI Desktop.
2. Click Get data from other sources.
3. In the Get Data dialog, search and select ODBC.
4. Click Connect.
5. For Data source name (DSN), keep the default Arrow Flight ODBC DSN selected.
6. Click OK.
7. In the ODBC driver dialog, select Default or Custom.
8. Leave the Credential connection string properties blank. The authentication token configured in the ODBC data source automatically handles authentication.
9. Click Connect.
10. In the Navigator dialog, expand Appian. All record types that the service account has Viewer permissions to appear in the list with their SQL reference name.
11. Select the data to load or transform.

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