Design BIRT Reports on Postmark Data

The CData JDBC Driver for Postmark integrates connectivity to Postmark APIs into your data-driven Java applications. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for Postmark with the BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tools) platform to create BIRT reports that reflect changes to your data in real time.

1. If you have not already done so, install the BIRT Framework plugin and the Database Development plugin for Eclipse.
2. Click File -> New -> Report. The Report Design perspective is opened.
3. In the Data Explorer, right-click Data Sources and click New Data Source.
4. Select the Create from a Data Source Type in the Following List option and select JDBC Data Source.
5. Click Manage Drivers and add the driver JAR, located in the lib subfolder of the installation folder.
6. In the Database URL box, enter the JDBC URL containing the connection string.

   Using API Key Authentication

   Postmark uses server API tokens to authenticate requests. Each Postmark server has its own API token, which controls access to messages, bounces, templates, and statistics associated with that server.

   To obtain your Server API Token, log in to your Postmark account and navigate to the server you want to connect to. Go to API Tokens under the server settings and copy the token labeled Server API token.

   After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
   • APIKey: Set this to your Postmark Server API Token. This value is sent as the X-Postmark-Server-Token header on every request.

   Example connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\Postmark.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your-server-api-token"
   

   Connecting to Postmark

   Once the authentication is configured, you can connect to Postmark and query data from any of the available tables such as OutboundMessages, Bounces, and Templates.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

   For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Postmark JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.api.jar
   

   Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

   👁 Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)
   

   When you configure the JDBC URL, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

   A typical JDBC URL is below:

   jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Postmark.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your-server-api-token"
   

7. Right-click the Data Sets folder and select the JDBC data source for Postmark.
8. In the resulting dialog, build the SELECT query to be used to retrieve the data for the report. This article uses the following query:

   SELECT , FROM Bounces WHERE = ''
   

9. In the Palette, drag a Chart onto the editor. The chart wizard is displayed.
10. After selecting the chart type, drag columns onto the chart fields on the Select Data tab.
11. Click Run -> View Report -> In Web Viewer to view the report.

Your BIRT reports can now pick up any updates to Postmark data. 👁 A BIRT report that can be refreshed on demand. (Salesforce is shown.)

To publish the report to your application server, add the driver JAR to the BIRT Viewer's classpath. For more information, see the CData KB for guides to deploying the JDBC Driver on Java application servers.