Integrate Google Spanner Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

The CData JDBC Driver for Google Spanner data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to Google Spanner data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on Google Spanner 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 Google Spanner connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

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

     Google Spanner uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you can use the embedded credentials or register an app with Google.

     See the Getting Started guide in the CData driver documentation for more information.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

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

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.googlespanner.jar

     Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

     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:googlespanner:ProjectId='project1';InstanceId='instance1';Database='db1';InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH
   • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.googlespanner.GoogleSpannerDriver.
   • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with.

Add Google Spanner Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with Google Spanner data.

1. Add the Google Spanner 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 Name, TotalDue FROM Customer
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 Customer table.
4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.