Create Power BI Reports on Real-Time REST Data

With built-in support for ODBC on Microsoft Windows, the CData ODBC Drivers provide self-service integration with self-service analytics tools such as Microsoft Power BI. The CData ODBC Driver for REST links your Power BI reports to operational REST data. You can monitor REST data through dashboards and ensure that your analysis reflects REST data in real time by scheduling refreshes or refreshing on demand. This article details how to use the ODBC driver to create real-time visualizations of REST data in Microsoft Power BI Desktop and then upload to Power BI.

The CData ODBC Drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live REST data in Power BI due to optimized data processing built into the driver. When you issue complex SQL queries from Power BI 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 Power BI data types.

Connect to REST as an ODBC Data Source

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. 👁 Configure ODBC DSN. (Salesforce is shown.)

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.

Create Data Visualizations

After creating an ODBC DSN, follow the steps below to connect to the REST ODBC DSN from Power BI Desktop:

1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Get Data -> More... to open the Get Data window. 👁 Open Get Data window.
   
2. In the Get Data window select Other -> ODBC to open the next window. 👁 Select ODBC.
   
3. Select the DSN in the menu. If you know the SQL query you want to use to import data, you can expand the Advanced options node and enter the query in the SQL Statement box. Otherwise, click OK to continue. 👁 Select the ODBC DSN. (Salesforce is shown.)
   
4. Choose Default or Custom as the authentication option and click Connect. 👁 Choose authentication option. (Salesforce is shown.)
   
5. Select tables in the Navigator dialog. 👁 The available tables. (Salesforce is shown.)
   

6. Click Transform Data to edit the query. The table you imported is displayed in the Power Query Editor. In the Power Query Editor, you can enrich your local copy of REST data with other data sources, pivot REST columns, and more. Power BI detects each column's data type from the REST metadata retrieved by the driver.

   Power BI records your modifications to the query in the Applied Steps section, adjusting the underlying data retrieval query that is executed to the remote REST data. When you click Close and Apply, Power BI executes the data retrieval query.

   Otherwise, click Load to pull the data into Power BI.

Create Data Visualizations

After pulling the data into Power BI, you can create data visualizations in the Report view by dragging fields from the Fields pane onto the canvas. Follow the steps below to create a pie chart (Salesforce shown):

1. Select the pie chart icon in the Visualizations pane.
2. Select a dimension in the Fields pane: for example, Name.
3. Select a measure in the Fields pane: for example, Annual Revenue.

You can change sort options by clicking the ellipsis (...) button for the chart. Options to select the sort column and change the sort order are displayed.

You can use both highlighting and filtering to focus on data. Filtering removes unfocused data from visualizations; highlighting dims unfocused data. You can highlight fields by clicking them:

You can apply filters at the page level, at the report level, or to a single visualization by dragging fields onto the Filters pane. To filter on the field's value, select one of the values that are displayed in the Filters pane.

Click Refresh to synchronize your report with any changes to the data.

Free Trial & More Information

If you are interested in connecting to your REST data from Microsoft Power BI, or any applications that support ODBC connectivity, download a free, 30-day trial of the CData ODBC Driver for REST. As always, our world-class support team is ready to answer any questions you may have.