Build Facebook-Connected Visualizations in datapine

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

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for Facebook, allowing you to query data from Facebook 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 Facebook, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Facebook data quickly.

Configure Facebook Connectivity for datapine

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

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

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

3. Facebook uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Facebook. 👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
   
4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Facebook 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 Facebook data from datapine.

Connecting to Facebook from datapine

Once you configure your connection to Facebook in Connect AI, you are ready to connect to Facebook 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. Facebook1)
   • 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 Facebook Data in datapine

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

Having connect to Facebook from datapine, you are now able to visualize and analyze real-time Facebook 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!