Use the CData ODBC Driver for REST in MicroStrategy Desktop

MicroStrategy is an analytics and mobility platform that enables data-driven innovation. When paired with the CData ODBC Driver for REST, you gain database-like access to live REST data from MicroStrategy, expanding your reporting and analytics capabilities. In this article, we walk through adding REST as a data source in MicroStrategy Desktop and creating a simple visualization of REST data.

The CData ODBC Driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live REST data in MicroStrategy due to optimized data processing built into the driver. When you issue complex SQL queries from MicroStrategy to REST, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to REST and utilizes the embedded SQL Engine to process unsupported operations (often SQL functions and JOIN operations) client-side. With built-in dynamic metadata querying, you can visualize and analyze REST data using native MicroStrategy data types.

Connect to REST as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to REST follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.

See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models REST APIs as bidirectional database tables and XML/JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

After setting the and providing any authentication values, set to "XML" or "JSON" and set to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

The property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

• Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your REST data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
• FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
• Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

See the Modeling REST Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

When you configure the DSN, 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.

Windows

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for REST in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

[CData REST Sys]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for REST
Description = My Description
DataModel = Relational
URI = C:/people.xml
Format = XML

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Connect to and Visualize REST Data using MicroStrategy Desktop

In addition to connecting REST in MicroStrategy enterprise products, you can connect to REST in MicroStrategy Desktop. Follow the steps below to add REST data as a dataset and create visualizations and reports of REST data.

1. Open MicroStrategy Desktop and create a new dossier.
2. In the datasets panel, click New Data, select Databases, and select Type a Query as the Import Option.
3. Add a new data source and choose DSN data sources.
4. Choose the DSN you previously configured (likely CData REST Sys) and select Generic DBMS in the Version menu.
5. Set the User and Password properties for the DSN (or use placeholder values) and name the data source.
👁 Creating a new data source for REST.

6. Select the new database instance to view the tables. You may need to manually click the search icon in the Available Tables section to see the tables.
7. Create a SQL query for the REST data (see below) and click Execute SQL to test the query.

   SELECT * FROM people
   

   👁 Querying REST for data.
   NOTE: Since we create a live connection, we can execute a SELECT * query and utilize the filtering and aggregation features native to the MicroStrategy products.
8. Click Finish and choose to connect live.
9. Choose a visualization, choose fields to display (data types are discovered automatically through dynamic metadata discovery) and apply any filters to create a new visualization of REST data. Where possible, the complex queries generated by the filters and aggregations will be pushed down to REST, while any unsupported operations (which can include SQL functions and JOIN operations) will be managed client-side by the CData SQL Engine embedded in the driver. 👁 Visualize REST data.
   
10. Once you are finished configuring the dossier, click File -> Save.

Using the CData ODBC Driver for REST in MicroStrategy Desktop, you can easily create robust visualizations and reports on REST data. Read our other articles on connecting to REST in MicroStrategy and connecting to REST in MicroStrategy Web for more examples.