Build Dashboards with AlloyDB Data in Dundas BI

The CData ODBC Driver for AlloyDB enables access to live data from AlloyDB under the ODBC standard, allowing you work with AlloyDB data in a wide variety of BI, reporting, and ETL tools and directly, using familiar SQL queries. This article shows how to connect to AlloyDB data as a generic ODBC Data Provider and create charts, reports, and dashboards based on AlloyDB data in Dundas BI.

Connect to AlloyDB Data

1. If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can configure the DSN using the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.
   
   

   The following connection properties are usually required in order to connect to AlloyDB.

   • Server: The host name or IP of the server hosting the AlloyDB database.
   • User: The user which will be used to authenticate with the AlloyDB server.
   • Password: The password which will be used to authenticate with the AlloyDB server.

   You can also optionally set the following:

   • Database: The database to connect to when connecting to the AlloyDB Server. If this is not set, the user's default database will be used.
   • Port: The port of the server hosting the AlloyDB database. This property is set to 5432 by default.

   Authenticating with Standard Authentication

   Standard authentication (using the user/password combination supplied earlier) is the default form of authentication.

   No further action is required to leverage Standard Authentication to connect.

   Authenticating with pg_hba.conf Auth Schemes

   There are additional methods of authentication available which must be enabled in the pg_hba.conf file on the AlloyDB server.

   Find instructions about authentication setup on the AlloyDB Server here.

   Authenticating with MD5 Authentication

   This authentication method must be enabled by setting the auth-method in the pg_hba.conf file to md5.

   Authenticating with SASL Authentication

   This authentication method must be enabled by setting the auth-method in the pg_hba.conf file to scram-sha-256.

   Authenticating with Kerberos

   The authentication with Kerberos is initiated by AlloyDB Server when the ∏ is trying to connect to it. You should set up Kerberos on the AlloyDB Server to activate this authentication method. Once you have Kerberos authentication set up on the AlloyDB Server, see the Kerberos section of the help documentation for details on how to authenticate with Kerberos.

   When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

2. Open the Dundas BI interface, open the menu, and click New Data Connector. 👁 Adding a New Data Connector.
   
3. Configure the Dundas BI Data Connector:
   • Name the Data Connector.
   • Select "ODBC generic" as the Data Provider.
   • Check the "Use System DSN" checkbox.
   • Select the appropriate System DSN.
   👁 Configure the Data Connector.
   

Add AlloyDB Data to a Dashboard

You are now ready to create a dashboard with AlloyDB data.

1. Navigate to the Home page.
2. Click Explore Data.
👁 Home > Explore Data

3. Expand the appropriate Data Connector.
4. Drag the relevant data from the Connector to the panel.
   • You can select an entire "table" to add, but you may need to remove Measures/Rows from the Metric Set to build an appropriate visualization. Alternatively, you can select only the fields you wish to include in the visualization.
   • With the fields selected, you can add any filters or conditions on the Measures and Rows, further customizing the visualization.
👁 Adding data from a Data Connector. (Salesforce is shown.)

5. Click Re-visualize from the menu bar and select the appropriate visualization for the data.
👁 Displayed Data. (Salesforce is shown.)

6. Click Add To New Dashboard to add the visualization to a new dashboard.
👁 Adding the Visualization to a Dashboard. (Salesforce is shown.)

7. Configure the dashboard, creating dynamic visualizations of AlloyDB data. 👁 Sample Dashboard (Salesforce data is shown.)