Crystal Reports is a business intelligence application by SAP designed to help you analyze your data with well-formatted,
pixel-perfect, and multi-page reports. When paired with CData Connect AI, Crystal Reports gets access to live BigQuery data.
This article demonstrates how to connect to BigQuery using Connect AI and report on BigQuery data in Crystal Reports.
CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for BigQuery, allowing you to query data from
BigQuery 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 BigQuery, leveraging server-side processing to return the
requested BigQuery data quickly.
About BigQuery Data Integration
CData simplifies access and integration of live Google BigQuery data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:
- Simplify access to BigQuery with broad out-of-the-box support for authentication schemes, including OAuth, OAuth JWT, and GCP Instance.
- Enhance data workflows with Bi-directional data access between BigQuery and other applications.
- Perform key BigQuery actions like starting, retrieving, and canceling jobs; deleting tables; or insert job loads through SQL stored procedures.
Most CData customers are using Google BigQuery as their data warehouse and so use CData solutions to migrate business data from separate sources into BigQuery for comprehensive analytics. Other customers use our connectivity to analyze and report on their Google BigQuery data, with many customers using both solutions.
For more details on how CData enhances your Google BigQuery experience, check out our blog post: https://www.cdata.com/blog/what-is-bigquery
Getting Started
Configure BigQuery Connectivity for Crystal Reports
Connectivity to BigQuery from Crystal Reports is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with BigQuery data from Crystal Reports, we start by creating and configuring a BigQuery connection.
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Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection
- Select "BigQuery" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source
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BigQuery uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with BigQuery.
👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
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Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add BigQuery 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.
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Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
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On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
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Give the PAT a name and click Create.
👁 Creating a new PAT
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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 BigQuery data from Crystal Reports.
Connect to BigQuery from Crystal Reports using Connect AI
To establish a connection from Crystal Reports to CData Connect AI, you will need to download the JDBC driver.
- Open the Client Tools page of CData Connect AI.
- Search for and select JDBC.
- Download and run the setup file.
- When the installation is complete, locate the JDBC Connect JAR file in the JDBC driver's installation directory, for example, C:\Program Files\CData\JDBC Driver for CData Connect\lib.
- Copy the JDBC Connect JAR file (cdata.jdbc.connect.jar).
After copying the JDBC CData Connect JAR file, you will need to paste it into the Crystal Reports installation location and configure the connection to Connect AI.
- Find the installation directory for Crystal Reports, for example, C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java\lib
- Paste the JDBC Connect JAR file into the Crystal Reports installation directory.
- Go to the parent java folder. For example, C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\java This folder should contain a CRConfig file.
👁 Locating the CRConfig file in the Crystal Reports installation directory.
- Open CRConfig in a text editor.
- Add the path to the JDBC CData Connect JAR file in the
- Log into Crystal Reports and start a blank report.
- In the Database Expert dialog, click Create New Connection.
- Select the JDBC data source and the tables you want to add. Click OK.
👁 Selecting the JDBC data source.
- In the Connection dialog, enter the Connection URL (e.g. jdbc:connect:AuthScheme=Basic;user=username;password=PAT;) and Database Classname (e.g. cdata.jdbc.connect.ConnectDriver).
👁 Configuring the connection.
- Click Finish. The Database Expert dialog displays all available connections.
👁 Browsing the available data from Connect AI.
You can now create reports with the connected data.
Get CData Connect AI
To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from Crystal Reports,
try CData Connect AI today!
