Connect to SQL Analysis Services Data in RapidMiner

This article shows how you can easily integrate the CData JDBC driver for SQL Analysis Services into your processes in RapidMiner. This article uses the CData JDBC Driver for SQL Analysis Services to transfer SQL Analysis Services data to a process in RapidMiner.

Connect to SQL Analysis Services in RapidMiner as a JDBC Data Source

You can follow the procedure below to establish a JDBC connection to SQL Analysis Services:

1. Add a new database driver for SQL Analysis Services: Click Connections -> Manage Database Drivers.
2. In the resulting wizard, click the Add button and enter a name for the connection.
3. Enter the prefix for the JDBC URL:

   jdbc:ssas:
   

4. Enter the path to the cdata.jdbc.ssas.jar file, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory.
5. Enter the driver class:

   cdata.jdbc.ssas.SSASDriver
   

   👁 The JDBC driver configuration. (Salesforce is shown.)
   
6. Create a new SQL Analysis Services connection: Click Connections -> Manage Database Connections.
7. Enter a name for your connection.
8. For Database System, select the SQL Analysis Services driver you configured previously.
9. Enter your connection string in the Host box.

   To connect, provide authentication and set the Url property to a valid SQL Server Analysis Services endpoint. You can connect to SQL Server Analysis Services instances hosted over HTTP with XMLA access. See the Microsoft documentation to configure HTTP access to SQL Server Analysis Services.

   To secure connections and authenticate, set the corresponding connection properties, below. The data provider supports the major authentication schemes, including HTTP and Windows, as well as SSL/TLS.

   • HTTP Authentication

     Set AuthScheme to "Basic" or "Digest" and set User and Password. Specify other authentication values in CustomHeaders.

   • Windows (NTLM)

     Set the Windows User and Password and set AuthScheme to "NTLM".

   • Kerberos and Kerberos Delegation

     To authenticate with Kerberos, set AuthScheme to NEGOTIATE. To use Kerberos delegation, set AuthScheme to KERBEROSDELEGATION. If needed, provide the User, Password, and KerberosSPN. By default, the data provider attempts to communicate with the SPN at the specified Url.

   • SSL/TLS:

     By default, the data provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats.

   You can then access any cube as a relational table: When you connect the data provider retrieves SSAS metadata and dynamically updates the table schemas. Instead of retrieving metadata every connection, you can set the CacheLocation property to automatically cache to a simple file-based store.

   See the Getting Started section of the CData documentation, under Retrieving Analysis Services Data, to execute SQL-92 queries to the cubes.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.ssas.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.)
   

   A typical connection string is below:

   User=myuseraccount;Password=mypassword;URL=http://localhost/OLAP/msmdpump.dll;
   

10. Enter your username and password if necessary. 👁 The connection to the JDBC data source. (Salesforce is shown.)
    

You can now use your SQL Analysis Services connection with the various RapidMiner operators in your process. To retrieve SQL Analysis Services data, drag the Retrieve operator from the Operators view. 👁 A Retrieve operation to select data. (Salesforce is shown.)
With the Retrieve operator selected, you can then define which table to retrieve in the Parameters view by clicking the folder icon next to the "repository entry." In the resulting Repository Browser, you can expand your connection node to select the desired example set.

Finally, wire the output to the Retrieve process to a result, and run the process to see the SQL Analysis Services data.