Visualize Live Adobe Commerce Data in the Power BI Service

Power BI transforms your company's data into rich visuals for you to collect and organize so you can focus on what matters to you. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant access to Adobe Commerce data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to build and publish a dataset from Adobe Commerce data in Power BI and then create reports on Adobe Commerce data in the Power BI service.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL interface for Adobe Commerce, allowing you to easily build reports from live Adobe Commerce data in Power BI — with no need to replicate the data. As you build visualizations, Power BI generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Adobe Commerce, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Adobe Commerce data.

NOTE: You can also import Adobe Commerce data into Power BI through Connect AI (instead of using the on-premise gateway). Read how in the related Knowledge Base article.

Configure Adobe Commerce Connectivity for Power BI

Connectivity to Adobe Commerce from Power BI is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Adobe Commerce data from Power BI, we start by creating and configuring a Adobe Commerce connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "Adobe Commerce" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Adobe Commerce.

   Adobe Commerce uses the OAuth 1 authentication standard. To connect to the Adobe Commerce REST API, obtain values for the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties by registering an app with your Adobe Commerce system. See the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the OAuth values and connecting.

   You will also need to provide the URL to your Adobe Commerce system. The URL depends on whether you are using the Adobe Commerce REST API as a customer or administrator.

   • Customer: To use Adobe Commerce as a customer, make sure you have created a customer account in the Adobe Commerce homepage. To do so, click Account -> Register. You can then set the URL connection property to the endpoint of your Adobe Commerce system.

   • Administrator: To access Adobe Commerce as an administrator, set CustomAdminPath instead. This value can be obtained in the Advanced settings in the Admin menu, which can be accessed by selecting System -> Configuration -> Advanced -> Admin -> Admin Base URL.

     If the Use Custom Admin Path setting on this page is set to YES, the value is inside the Custom Admin Path text box; otherwise, set the CustomAdminPath connection property to the default value, which is "admin".

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Adobe Commerce Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
   
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Adobe Commerce data from Power BI.

Connecting to Connect AI from Power BI

To connect to and visualize live Adobe Commerce data in the Power BI service, install the on-premise data gateway, add a data source to the gateway from the Power BI service, and publish a dataset from Power BI Desktop to the service.

Install the On-Premises Data Gateway

The Microsoft on-premise data gateway provides secure data transfer between connected data sources and various cloud-based Microsoft tools and platforms. You can read more about the gateway in the Microsoft documentation.

You can download and install the gateway from the Power BI service:

1. Log in to PowerBI.com.
2. Click the Download menu and click Data Gateway. 👁 Download the Data Gateway
   
3. Follow the instructions for installation, making note of the name of the gateway.

Add Adobe Commerce as a Data Source to the Power BI Service

Once you have installed the data gateway, you add Connect AI as a data source to the Power BI service:

1. Log in to PowerBI.com.
2. Click the Settings menu and click "Manage gateways." 👁 Settings -> Manage gateways
   
3. Click "ADD DATA SOURCE" and configure the connection to Connect AI:
   
   
   • Set Data Source Name to something like ConnectCloudAdobe Commerce.
   • Choose SQL Server as the Data Source Type.
   • Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333.
   • Set Database to the name of your Adobe Commerce connection (e.g. Adobe Commerce1).
   • Set Authentication Method to Basic.
   • Set Username to a Connect AI user (e.g. [email protected])
   • Set Password to the PAT for the user above.

Publish a Dataset from Power BI Desktop

With the gateway installed and Connect AI added as a datasource to the Power BI service, you can publish a dataset from Power BI Desktop to the service.

1. Open Power BI, click Get Data -> More, then select SQL Server database, and click Connect.
👁 Create a new connection in Power BI

2. Set the connection properties and click OK.
   • Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333.
   • Set Database to the name of your Adobe Commerce connection (e.g. Adobe Commerce1).
   • Set Data Connectivity mode to DirectQuery*.
   👁 Connect to CData Connect AI instance
   * DirectQuery enables live query processing and real-time visualizations of Adobe Commerce data.
3. In the authentication wizard, select Database, set the User name and Password properties, and click Connect.
👁 Authenticate the connection

4. Select the table(s) to visualize in the Navigator dialog.
5. In the Query Editor, you can customize your dataset by filtering, sorting, and summarizing Adobe Commerce columns. Click Edit to open the query editor. Right-click a raw to filter the rows. Right-click a column header to perform options like the following:
   • Change column data types
   • Remove a column
   • Group by columns

   Power BI detects each column's data type from the Adobe Commerce metadata reported by Connect AI.

   Power BI records your modifications to the query in the Applied Steps section, adjusting the underlying data retrieval query that is executed to the remote Adobe Commerce data. When you click Close and Apply, Power BI executes the data Retrieval query.

   Otherwise, click Load to pull the data into Power BI.

6. Define any relationships between the selected entities on the Relationships tab.
7. Click Publish (from the Home menu) and select a Workspace.

Build Reports and Dashboards on Adobe Commerce Data in the Power BI Service

Now that you have published a dataset to the Power BI service, you can create new reports and dashboards based on the published data:

1. Log in to PowerBI.com.
2. Click Workspaces and select a workspace.
3. Click Create and select Report.
4. Select the published dataset for the report. 👁 Select a dataset
   
5. Choose fields and visualizations to add to your report. 👁 Visualizing Adobe Commerce data in the Power BI service
   

Live Access to Adobe Commerce Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Adobe Commerce data from the Power BI service. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Adobe Commerce data.

To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect AI.