Connecting to an Amazon RDS MySQL Database

Henry Simms
Henry Simms Administrator
edited May 10 in Tips and tricks

A user recently asked about connecting Data Studio to their AWS RDS MySQL Database.

The first thing to note is that MySQL on RDS uses the MySQL community edition, which is not supported by Data Studio's native JDBC driver. When attempting to connect, you'll receive this error: "Connections to MySQL Community Server are not supported".

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Fortunately it's simple to set up a connection using the MySQL Connector/J driver, available from https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/

First follow the documented steps to enable the 3rd party JDBC drivers. You should then see a "Custom MySQL" driver in the list of available driver DBMS when creating a new JDBC External System:

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Next, simply configure the driver using the connection settings from the Amazon RDS Console:

  • Hostname: This is the "Endpoint" shown in the Amazon RDS console (as shown in the screenshot below).
  • Port: Port number, also found in the screenshot. Ensure that your database's Security Group is correctly configured to allow connections from the Data Studio server's IP on this port. Incorrect configuration will typically result in a "Failed to connect; connection timed out after 15 seconds." error when testing connection from Data Studio.
  • Database: Name of the schema to connect to (or leave blank for default schema). Note that for MySQL, a schema is synonymous with a database.
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Add username and password in the Credentials, and you should now be able to successfully connect to your RDS MySQL instance.

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