Analyze Azure Data Catalog Data in Infragistics Reveal

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData Connect Server and Azure Data Catalog Connector to build dynamic dashboards from live Azure Data Catalog data. The CData Connect Server creates a virtual database for Azure Data Catalog and can be used to generate an OData API (natively consumable in Reveal) for Azure Data Catalog. In this article, we walk through connecting to Azure Data Catalog in Connect Server and connecting to Connect Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

Add a Connect Server User

Create a User to connect to Azure Data Catalog from Reveal through Connect Server.

1. Click Users -> Add
2. Configure a User
3. Click Save Changes and make note of the Authtoken for the new user

Connect to Azure Data Catalog from Connect Server

CData Connect Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Open Connect Server and click Connections
2. Select "Azure Data Catalog" from Available Data Sources
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Azure Data Catalog.

   You can optionally set the following to read the different catalog data returned from Azure Data Catalog.

   CatalogName: Set this to the CatalogName associated with your Azure Data Catalog. To get your Catalog name, navigate to your Azure Portal home page > Data Catalog > Catalog Name

   Connect Using OAuth Authentication

   You must use OAuth to authenticate with Azure Data Catalog. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Azure Data Catalog using the browser. For more information, refer to the OAuth section in the help documentation.

4. Click Save Changes
5. Click Privileges -> Add and add the new user (or an existing user) with the appropriate permissions (SELECT is all that is required for Reveal).

Add Azure Data Catalog OData Endpoints in Connect Server

After connecting to Azure Data Catalog, create OData Endpoint for the desired table(s).

1. Click OData -> Tables -> Add Tables
2. Select the Azure Data Catalog database
3. Select the table(s) you wish to work with and click Next
4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
5. Save the settings

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in OData -> Settings.

• Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
• Allow all domains without '*': ON
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
• Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With Connect Server configured, we can visualize Azure Data Catalog data in Reveal.

1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New
2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed
3. Specify the Connect Server API endpoint URL (found in API -> Discovery -> Base URL), for example: CONNECT_SERVER_URL/api.rsc
4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the Connect Server username and authentication token
5. Select the entity you wish to visualize
6. Select fields and choose a chart type

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Azure Data Catalog data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Azure Data Catalog (and more than 150 other sources), visit the Connect Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Azure Data Catalog data in tools that consume OData APIs.