Integrate Zuora Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

The CData JDBC driver for Zuora data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to Zuora data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on Zuora data in Pentaho.

Connect and Create a Report

1. Copy the JAR file of the driver, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory, to the \Report-Designer\lib\jdbc\ folder in the Pentaho directory.
2. Run the report-designer.bat file in the \Report-Designer\ folder to open the Report-Designer UI.

3. Create a new data source with the driver by clicking Data -> Add Data Source -> Advanced -> JDBC (Custom) and then creating a new Zuora connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

   • Custom Connection URL property: Enter the JDBC URL. This starts with jdbc:zuora: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

     Zuora uses the OAuth standard to authenticate users. See the online Help documentation for a full OAuth authentication guide.

     Configuring Tenant property

     In order to create a valid connection with the provider you need to choose one of the Tenant values (USProduction by default) which matches your account configuration. The following is a list with the available options:

     • USProduction: Requests sent to https://rest.zuora.com.
     • USAPISandbox: Requests sent to https://rest.apisandbox.zuora.com"
     • USPerformanceTest: Requests sent to https://rest.pt1.zuora.com"
     • EUProduction: Requests sent to https://rest.eu.zuora.com"
     • EUSandbox: Requests sent to https://rest.sandbox.eu.zuora.com"

     Selecting a Zuora Service

     Two Zuora services are available: Data Query and AQuA API. By default ZuoraService is set to AQuADataExport.

     DataQuery

     The Data Query feature enables you to export data from your Zuora tenant by performing asynchronous, read-only SQL queries. We recommend to use this service for quick lightweight SQL queries.

     Limitations
     • The maximum number of input records per table after filters have been applied: 1,000,000
     • The maximum number of output records: 100,000
     • The maximum number of simultaneous queries submitted for execution per tenant: 5
     • The maximum number of queued queries submitted for execution after reaching the limitation of simultaneous queries per tenant: 10
     • The maximum processing time for each query in hours: 1
     • The maximum size of memory allocated to each query in GB: 2
     • The maximum number of indices when using Index Join, in other words, the maximum number of records being returned by the left table based on the unique value used in the WHERE clause when using Index Join: 20,000

     AQuADataExport

     AQuA API export is designed to export all the records for all the objects ( tables ). AQuA query jobs have the following limitations:

     Limitations
     • If a query in an AQuA job is executed longer than 8 hours, this job will be killed automatically.
     • The killed AQuA job can be retried three times before returned as failed.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

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

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.zuora.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.)
     

     When you configure the JDBC URL, 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.

     Below is a typical JDBC URL:

     jdbc:zuora:OAuthClientID=MyOAuthClientId;OAuthClientSecret=MyOAuthClientSecret;Tenant=USProduction;ZuoraService=DataQuery;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;

   • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.zuora.ZuoraDriver.
   • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with.
   👁 Required connection properties defined in the JDBC URL. (Salesforce is shown.)
   

Add Zuora Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with Zuora data.

1. Add the Zuora source to your report: Click Data -> Add Data Source -> JDBC and select the data source.

2. Configure the query. This article uses the one below:

   SELECT Id, BillingCity FROM Invoices WHERE BillingState = 'CA'

   👁 The query to retrieve data, specified in the JDBC data source configuration wizard. (Salesforce is shown.)
   
3. Drag a chart onto your report and double-click it to edit the chart. Run the report to display the chart. You can use the results of this query to create a simple chart for the Invoices table.
4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.