Grafana is an open-source platform that allows users to analyze, monitor, and visualize telemetry from various data sources. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate access to Lakebase data for business dashboards. This article outlines the process of connecting to Lakebase using Connect AI and creating a basic dashboard from Lakebase data within Grafana.
CData Connect AI offers a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Lakebase, enabling the creation of dashboards directly from live Lakebase data within Grafana, all without the need for data replication to a native database. As you build visualizations, Grafana generates SQL queries to gather data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to Lakebase. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly deliver the requested Lakebase data.
Configure Lakebase Connectivity for Grafana
Connectivity to Lakebase from Grafana is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Lakebase data from Grafana, we start by creating and configuring a Lakebase connection.
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Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection
- Select "Lakebase" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source
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Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Lakebase.
To connect to Databricks Lakebase, start by setting the following properties:
- DatabricksInstance: The Databricks instance or server hostname, provided in the format instance-abcdef12-3456-7890-abcd-abcdef123456.database.cloud.databricks.com.
- Server: The host name or IP address of the server hosting the Lakebase database.
- Port (optional): The port of the server hosting the Lakebase database, set to 5432 by default.
- Database (optional): The database to connect to after authenticating to the Lakebase Server, set to the authenticating user's default database by default.
OAuth Client Authentication
To authenicate using OAuth client credentials, you need to configure an OAuth client in your service principal. In short, you need to do the following:
- Create and configure a new service principal
- Assign permissions to the service principal
- Create an OAuth secret for the service principal
For more information, refer to the Setting Up OAuthClient Authentication section in the Help documentation.
OAuth PKCE Authentication
To authenticate using the OAuth code type with PKCE (Proof Key for Code Exchange), set the following properties:
- AuthScheme: OAuthPKCE.
- User: The authenticating user's user ID.
For more information, refer to the Help documentation.
👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
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Click Save & Test
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Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Lakebase 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 Lakebase data from Grafana.
Visualize Live Lakebase Data in Grafana
To establish a connection from Grafana to the CData Connect AI Virtual SQL Server API, follow these steps.
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If you have not already done so, download and install Grafana for your operating system from the Grafana Website. Once installed, access Grafana at http://localhost:3000/.
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Log in to Grafana with your username and password for Grafana. If this is your first time logging in, the username is admin and the password is admin.
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On the navigation menu, click Sources > Add new connection. On this page, you can search for Microsoft SQL Server and select it as your data source.
👁 Adding a new Connection in Grafana
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Select Microsoft SQL Server and click Add new data source.
👁 Adding a new Connection in Grafana
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Enter a name for the new data source and then enter the following connection settings:
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Click Save & Test. A Database Connect OK message appears when you have a successful connection established.
Create a Dashboard
Once you create the data source for Lakebase, you can start building dashboards on Lakebase data. Start in the navigation menu and click Dashboards
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On the Dashboards page, click + Create dashboard, then click + Add visualization.
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This opens the Select data source window where you can select your created connection.
👁 Select your connection. (Salesforce shown)
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After selecting your connection, you can choose the tables and columns that you want to query for your visualization. Then press Run Query to run the generated query.
👁 Select the tables and columns you want to query. (Salesforce shown)
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After running your query, the resulting data is populated above the query editor. Here you can select the visualization that you want to use to present your data on the dashboard panel.
👁 Visualize your queried data. (Salesforce shown)
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When you have finished editing your panel, you can click Save dashboard to save the changes made to your Dashboard.
To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today!
