datapine is a browser-based business intelligence platform. When paired with the CData Connect AI, you get access to your Salesforce data directly from your datapine visualizations and dashboards. This article describes connecting to Salesforce in CData Connect AI and building a simple Salesforce-connected visualization in datapine.
CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for Salesforce, allowing you to query data from Salesforce without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Salesforce, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Salesforce data quickly.
About Salesforce Data Integration
Accessing and integrating live data from Salesforce has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:
- Access to custom entities and fields means Salesforce users get access to all of Salesforce.
- Create atomic and batch update operations.
- Read, write, update, and delete their Salesforce data.
- Leverage the latest Salesforce features and functionalities with support for SOAP API versions 30.0.
- See improved performance based on SOQL support to push complex queries down to Salesforce servers.
- Use SQL stored procedures to perform actions like creating, retrieving, aborting, and deleting jobs, uploading and downloading attachments and documents, and more.
Users frequently integrate Salesforce data with:
- other ERPs, marketing automation, HCMs, and more.
- preferred data tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker, and more.
- databases and data warehouses.
For more information on how CData solutions work with Salesforce, check out our Salesforce integration page.
Getting Started
Configure Salesforce Connectivity for datapine
Connectivity to Salesforce from datapine is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Salesforce data from datapine, we start by creating and configuring a Salesforce connection.
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Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection
- Select "Salesforce" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source
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Salesforce uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Salesforce.
👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
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Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Salesforce 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 Salesforce data from datapine.
Connecting to Salesforce from datapine
Once you configure your connection to Salesforce in Connect AI, you are ready to connect to Salesforce from datapine.
- Log into datapine
- Click Connect to navigate to the "Connect" page
- Select MS SQL Server as the data source
- In the Integration step, fill in the connection properties and click "Save and Proceed"
- Set the Internal Name
- Set Database Name to the name of the connection we just configured (e.g. Salesforce1)
- Set Host / IP to "tds.cdata.com"
- Set Username to your Connect AI username (e.g. [email protected])
- Set Password to the corresponding PAT
- Set Database Port to "14333"
👁 Configuring the connection to CData Connect AI
- In the Data Schema step, select the tables and fields to visualize and click "Save and Proceed"
👁 Selecting tables and fields to visualize (Salesforce is shown)
- In the References step, define any relationships between your selected tables and click "Save and Proceed"
👁 Defining foreign key relationships
- In the Data Transfer step, click "Go to Analyzer"
Visualize Salesforce Data in datapine
After connecting to CData Connect AI, you are ready to visualize your Salesforce data in datapine. Simply select the dimensions and measures you wish to visualize!
👁 Visualizing data in datapine (Salesforce is shown)
Having connect to Salesforce from datapine, you are now able to visualize and analyze real-time Salesforce data no matter where you are. To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from datapine, try CData Connect AI today!
