Build BigCommerce-Connected Visualizations in datapine

datapine is a browser-based business intelligence platform. When paired with the CData Connect AI, you get access to your BigCommerce data directly from your datapine visualizations and dashboards. This article describes connecting to BigCommerce in CData Connect AI and building a simple BigCommerce-connected visualization in datapine.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for BigCommerce, allowing you to query data from BigCommerce without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to BigCommerce, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested BigCommerce data quickly.

Configure BigCommerce Connectivity for datapine

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

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

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

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to BigCommerce.

   BigCommerce authentication is based on the standard OAuth flow. To authenticate, you must initially create an app via the Big Commerce developer platform where you can obtain an OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL. These three parameters will be set as connection properties to your driver.

   Additionally, in order to connect to your BigCommerce Store, you will need your StoreId. To find your Store Id please follow these steps:

   1. Log in to your BigCommerce account.
   2. From the Home Page, select Advanced Settings > API Accounts.
   3. Click Create API Account.
   4. A text box named API Path will appear on your screen.
   5. Inside you can see a URL of the following structure: https://api.bigcommerce.com/stores/{Store Id}/v3.
   6. As demonstrated above, your Store Id will be between the 'stores/' and '/v3' path paramters.
   7. Once you have retrieved your Store Id you can either click Cancel or proceed in creating an API Account in case you do not have one already.
   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add BigCommerce 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 BigCommerce data from datapine.

Connecting to BigCommerce from datapine

Once you configure your connection to BigCommerce in Connect AI, you are ready to connect to BigCommerce from datapine.

1. Log into datapine
2. Click Connect to navigate to the "Connect" page
3. Select MS SQL Server as the data source
4. In the Integration step, fill in the connection properties and click "Save and Proceed"
   • Set the Internal Name
   • Set Database Name to the name of the connection we just configured (e.g. BigCommerce1)
   • Set Host / IP to "tds.cdata.com"
   • Set Username to your Connect AI username (e.g. [email protected])
   • Set Password to the corresponding PAT
   • Set Database Port to "14333"
   👁 Configuring the connection to CData Connect AI
   
5. In the Data Schema step, select the tables and fields to visualize and click "Save and Proceed" 👁 Selecting tables and fields to visualize (Salesforce is shown)
   
6. In the References step, define any relationships between your selected tables and click "Save and Proceed" 👁 Defining foreign key relationships
   
7. In the Data Transfer step, click "Go to Analyzer"

Visualize BigCommerce Data in datapine

After connecting to CData Connect AI, you are ready to visualize your BigCommerce data in datapine. Simply select the dimensions and measures you wish to visualize!

Having connect to BigCommerce from datapine, you are now able to visualize and analyze real-time BigCommerce data no matter where you are. To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from datapine, try CData Connect AI today!