Analyze Amazon S3 Data in Infragistics Reveal

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server to build dynamic dashboards from live Amazon S3 data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for Amazon S3, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to Amazon S3 in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

Connect to Amazon S3 from API Server

CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection 👁 Adding a connection
   
2. Select "Amazon S3" 👁 Selecting a Connector (Salesforce is shown).
   
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Amazon S3.

   To authorize Amazon S3 requests, provide the credentials for an administrator account or for an IAM user with custom permissions. Set AccessKey to the access key Id. Set SecretKey to the secret access key.

   Note: You can connect as the AWS account administrator, but it is recommended to use IAM user credentials to access AWS services.

   For information on obtaining the credentials and other authentication methods, refer to the Getting Started section of the Help documentation.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown).
   

Add Amazon S3 Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to Amazon S3, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for Amazon S3 data.

1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource 👁 Adding a new resource
   
2. Select the Amazon S3 connection 👁 Selecting a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
3. Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next 👁 Selecting a Table (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

Add an API Server User

Create a User to connect to Amazon S3 from Reveal through API Server.

1. Click Settings -> Users
2. Click Add
3. Configure a User with access to the Amazon S3 Connection and Resource(s) 👁 Creating a new user
   

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
• Allow all domains without '*': ON
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
• Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize Amazon S3 data in Reveal.

1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New 👁 Adding a new dashboard
   
2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed 👁 Adding a new OData data source
   
3. Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc 👁 Configuring the OData URL
   
4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token 👁 Configuring the credentials
   
5. Select the entity you wish to visualize 👁 Selecting an entity to visualize (Salesforce is shown.)
   
6. Select fields and choose a chart type 👁 Visualizing data in Reveal (Salesforce is shown.)
   

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Amazon S3 data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Amazon S3 (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Amazon S3 data in tools that consume OData APIs.