Accessing and Launching Workstations

Users are assigned cloud-based workstations to perform analysis on the datasets. This section
provides a description of how to launch and use these workstations.

Launch Workstations

1. Users can see the assigned workstations by clicking on WORKSTATIONS from the top
   menu. By default, all the workstations are in an inactive state.

2. Click on Start to start the workstation.

   

3. The workstation should become available within five minutes; you may not see any change immediately. A message will appear when the workstation has been successfully started.

   

4. Now click Launch for the workstation.

   

5. This will provide a user access to their workstation within the browser. The workstation may take a few minutes to initialize. When complete, a login screen will appear. User is prompted to re-enter SDC username and password.

   

Software Validation

By default, users will have the following installed on their workstations:
• Java
• Python
• R, RStudio
• SQL Workbench
• Power BI
• AWS CLI
• Adobe
• Libre Office
• Visual Studio
• PuTTY
• Firefox

Connecting to the Data Warehouse

The following sections illustrate how the user can connect to the data stores available to the

SDC.

Connecting to Waze Data in Redshift Using SQL Workbench

Launch SQL Workbench by double-clicking the SQL Workbench shortcut on the desktop.

Create a Redshift connection profile to connect to Waze data:

1. Create a new connection profile by selecting the top left corner icon on the “Select
   Connection Profile” window.

2. Select “Amazon Redshift Driver” from the Driver drop-down.

3. Update the URL section with the Redshift URL provided in the email from the
   support desk detailing Redshift login credentials.

4. Provide your username and password received in the welcome email.

5. Click on the Test button at the bottom to test the connection. A pop-up dialog will
   appear confirming a successful or failed connection.

Connecting to Waze Data in Redshift Using Python

NOTE: When you are granted access to Waze data, the SDC support team creates a new
Redshift user for you, assigns it with a Redshift password, and emails you with information on
the Redshift host you will connect to. This email message provides the redshiftHost,
userName, and userPassword values shown below. Your Redshift credentials are only used
for connecting to Redshift and NOT for accessing the portal, which uses your separate SDC
credentials.
Important: The default version of Python installed on the SDC Windows Workstations is
v2.7.4. There are two required Python modules that must be installed prior to attempting to
connect to Redshift with Python using the example code below. To install these modules, open a
Windows Command Prompt, and enter the following two commands:

C:\Users\username> pip install psycopg2
C:\Users\username> pip install numpy

The above "pip install …" command(s) only need to be run ONCE on the SDC Windows
Workstation. Once the Python modules are installed, they remain available, even across reboots
of the workstation.
To test Python connectivity to Redshift, open the IDLE python editor and execute the following:

from __future__ import print_function
import psycopg2
import numpy
dbName = 'dot_sdc_redshift_db'
redshiftHost = '[host address]'
redshiftPort = 5439
userName = '[username]'
userPassword = '[password]'
# query = 'select * from dw_waze.alert limit 10;'
query = "select * from dw_waze.alert where 
alert_type='ACCIDENT' and city = 'Severance, CO'"
conn = psycopg2.connect(
dbname=dbName,
host=redshiftHost,
port=redshiftPort,
user=userName,
password=userPassword)
cursor = conn.cursor()
cursor.execute(query)
result = cursor.fetchall()
result = numpy.array(result)
# print(result)
for r in result:
print (r[1], r[8], r[18], r[19], r[22], sep='\t')

For further information and examples, refer to the internal SDC GitLab collaboration site.

Connecting to the Hadoop Hive Metastore

Launch SQL Workbench by double-clicking on the SQL Workbench shortcut on the desktop:

1. Create a new connection profile by selecting the top left corner icon on the “Select
   Connection Profile” window.

2. Select “Hive JDBC” from the Driver drop-down.

3. Update URL section with the Hive URL.

4. Provide your username and password received in the welcome email. NOTE: You are
   not required to enter the “@internal.sdc.dot.gov” portion of your username to log on.

5. Click on the Test button at the bottom to validate your connection. A pop-up dialog will
   appear confirming a successful or failed connection. If you continue running into a failed
   connection, contact the SDC support desk for assistance

Update Data Formatting Settings in SQL Workbench

Connecting to the SDC Hadoop Data Warehouse Using Python

Connecting to Redshift from Linux Environment

Accessing Jupyter Notebook and RStudio Server

Manage Workstations

Resize Workstation

Schedule/Extend Uptime

Stop Workstations