> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://cockroachlabs.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# SHOW EXTERNAL CONNECTION
export const InternalLink = ({version, path = "", children, ...props}) => {
let detectedVersion = version || "stable";
if (typeof window !== 'undefined' && !version) {
const match = window.location.pathname.match(/\/docs\/([^/]+)/);
if (match) {
detectedVersion = match[1];
}
}
const normalizedPath = path.startsWith("/") ? path.slice(1) : path;
return
{children}
;
};
You can use external connections to specify and interact with resources that are external from CockroachDB. When creating an external connection, you define a name for an external connection while passing the provider URI and query parameters. `SHOW EXTERNAL CONNECTION` displays the connection name, URI, and the type of connection.
You can also use the following SQL statements to work with external connections:
* `CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION`
* `SHOW CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION`
* `DROP EXTERNAL CONNECTION`
## Required privileges
Users with the `admin` role can view all external connections with `SHOW EXTERNAL CONNECTION`.
Without the `admin` role, users can view the external connections that they own. Users own external connections that they have created with `CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION`.
## Synopsis
### Parameters
`string_or_placeholder` is the name of the created external connection.
## Responses
| Response | Description |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `connection\_name` | The user-specified name of the external connection. |
| `connection\_uri` | The storage/sink URI that the external connection references. |
| `connection_type` | Possible values are:
- `STORAGE` applies to storage for backups and imports and changefeed sinks.
- `KMS` applies to storage for encrypted backups.
- `FOREIGNDATA` applies to `postgres://` connections for physical cluster replication.
. |
## Examples
### Show all external connections in the cluster
```sql theme={"theme":{"light":"catppuccin-mocha","dark":"catppuccin-mocha"}}
SHOW EXTERNAL CONNECTIONS;
```
```text theme={"theme":{"light":"catppuccin-mocha","dark":"catppuccin-mocha"}}
connection_name | connection_uri | connection_type
------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------------
msk | kafka://boot-vzq1qitx.c1.kafka-serverless.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:9098/?sasl_aws_iam_role_arn={ARN}&sasl_aws_iam_session_name={session name}t&sasl_aws_region=us-east-1&sasl_enabled=true&sasl_mechanism=AWS_MSK_IAM&tls_enabled=true | STORAGE
s3_bucket | s3://bucket name?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={access key}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=redacted | STORAGE
```
### Show an external connection
```sql theme={"theme":{"light":"catppuccin-mocha","dark":"catppuccin-mocha"}}
SHOW EXTERNAL CONNECTION s3_bucket;
```
```text theme={"theme":{"light":"catppuccin-mocha","dark":"catppuccin-mocha"}}
connection_name | connection_uri | connection_type
------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------------
s3_bucket | s3://bucket name?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={access key}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=redacted | STORAGE
(1 row)
```
## See also
* Changefeed Sinks
* Use Cloud Storage