ShipStation Reporting and Star Schemas in OBIEE

The CData ODBC Driver for ShipStation is a standard database driver that can integrate real-time access to ShipStation data into your data warehouse or directly into your reporting tool. This article shows how to bypass the data warehouse and import operational ShipStation data into Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE).

See the knowledge base for ODBC integrations with ETL tools like Informatica PowerCenter. For an ETL solution into Oracle Warehouse Builder, use the driver with the Oracle ODBC Gateway to Access ShipStation Data as a Remote Oracle Database.

Connect to ShipStation 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.

Use the BASIC Authentication standard to connect.

1. Login to your ShipStation account
2. Click on the settings icon in the upper right corner. A column menu will show up on the left
3. Click Account -> API Settings
4. On the API Settings page, note the API Key and API Secret.

Authenticating to ShipStation

• APIKey: Set this to the API key from the API settings page.
• APISecret: Set this to the Secret key from the API settings page.

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.

Import ShipStation Metadata

Follow the steps below to use the OBIEE Client Tools to import ShipStation metadata into an OBIEE repository. You can then integrate ShipStation data into your business models.

1. Open the Administration Tool and click File -> New Repository.

2. In the Connection Type menu, select ODBC 3.5 and select the CData DSN.
3. Select the metadata types you want to import under the Relational Sources option and then select ShipStation tables. 👁 Tables to be imported into the repository. (Salesforce is shown.)
   

You can now create star schemas based on ShipStation tables: 👁 Fact and dimension tables. (Salesforce is shown.)