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⇱ Create Reports from OData Services in Looker Studio

Create Reports from OData Services in Looker Studio

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to gain access to live OData services and create custom reports in Looker Studio.

Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, empowers users to craft customized reports featuring data visualizations that can be shared with clients while reflecting your brand identity. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to OData services to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for OData and generating reports from OData services within Looker Studio.

CData Connect AI offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for OData, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live OData services within Looker Studio without the need for data replication. As you create visualizations, Looker Studio generates queries to retrieve data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to OData. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested OData services.

About OData Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live OData services data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Access OData versions 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0, working with legacy services and the latest features and capabilities.
  • Leverage advanced query options, including $filter, $select, and $expand, enhancing data retrieval from 3rd party tools.
  • Use Server-side execution of aggregation and grouping to minimize data transfer and boost performance.
  • Authenticate securely using a variety of schemes, including Azure AD, digest, negotiate, NTLM, OAuth, and more means secure authentication with every connection.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to manage OData service entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

Customers use CData's solutions to regularly integrate their OData services with preferred tools, such as Power BI, MicroStrategy, or Tableau, and to replicate data from OData services to their databases or data warehouses.


Getting Started


This article requires a CData Connect AI instance and the CData Connect AI Connector for Looker Studio. Get more information on the CData Connect AI and sign up for a free trial at https://www.cdata.com/cloud.


Configure OData Connectivity for Looker Studio

Connectivity to OData from Looker Studio is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with OData services from Looker Studio, we start by creating and configuring a OData connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "OData" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to OData.

    The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid OData user credentials. In addition, specify a URL to a valid OData server organization root or OData services file.

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add OData Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to OData services from Looker Studio.

Visualize Live OData Services from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker Studio to create a new OData data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

  1. Log into Looker Studio, click data sources, create a new data source, and choose CData Connect AI Connector.
    2. 👁 Create a new connection in Looker Studio
  2. Click Authorize and allow access to your Google account. 👁 Granting permissions to the Connector
  3. Click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance 👁 Authenticating with CData Connect AI
  4. In the CData Connect AI Connector in Looker Studio select Connections to import from the dropdown and click Next
    5. 👁 Importing from Connections
  5. Now select a Connection (e.g. OData1) and click Next 👁 Selecting a Connection
  6. Select a Table (e.g. Orders) or use a Custom Query and click Connect to continue 👁 Selecting a Table
  7. If needed, modify columns, click Create Report, and add the data source to the report.
    8. 👁 Configuring column definitions
  8. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
  9. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.
    10. 👁 Visualizing OData services in Looker Studio

Live Access to OData Services from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live OData services from your Looker Studio workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating OData services.

Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.