How to Create Power BI Visual Reports with Real-Time IBM Cloud Object Storage Data

CData Power BI Connectors provide self-service integration with Microsoft Power BI. The CData Power BI Connector for IBM Cloud Object Storage links your Power BI reports to real-time IBM Cloud Object Storage data. You can monitor IBM Cloud Object Storage data through dashboards and ensure that your analysis reflects IBM Cloud Object Storage data in real time by scheduling refreshes or refreshing on demand. This article details how to use the Power BI Connector to create real-time visualizations of IBM Cloud Object Storage data in Microsoft Power BI Desktop.

If you are interested in publishing reports on IBM Cloud Object Storage data to PowerBI.com, refer to our other Knowledge Base article.

Collaborative Query Processing

The CData Power BI Connectors offer unmatched performance for interacting with live IBM Cloud Object Storage data in Power BI due to optimized data processing built into the connector. When you issue complex SQL queries from Power BI to IBM Cloud Object Storage, the connector pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to IBM Cloud Object Storage and utilizes the embedded SQL Engine to process unsupported operations (often SQL functions and JOIN operations) client-side. With built-in dynamic metadata querying, you can visualize and analyze IBM Cloud Object Storage data using native Power BI data types.

Connect to IBM Cloud Object Storage as a Power BI Data Source

Installing the Power BI Connector creates a DSN (data source name) called CData Power BI IBM Cloud Object Storage. This the name of the DSN that Power BI uses to request a connection to the data source. Configure the DSN by filling in the required connection properties.

You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure the DSN: From the Start menu, enter "ODBC Data Sources" and select the CData PowerBI REST DSN. Ensure that you run the version of the ODBC Administrator that corresponds to the bitness of your Power BI Desktop installation (32-bit or 64-bit). You can also use run the ConfigureODBC.exe tool located in the installation folder for the connector.

Register a New Instance of Cloud Object Storage

If you do not already have Cloud Object Storage in your IBM Cloud account, follow the procedure below to install an instance of SQL Query in your account:

1. Log in to your IBM Cloud account.
2. Navigate to the page, choose a name for your instance and click Create. You will be redirected to the instance of Cloud Object Storage you just created.

Connecting using OAuth Authentication

There are certain connection properties you need to set before you can connect. You can obtain these as follows:

API Key

To connect with IBM Cloud Object Storage, you need an API Key. You can obtain this as follows:

1. Log in to your IBM Cloud account.
2. Navigate to the Platform API Keys page.
3. On the middle-right corner click "Create an IBM Cloud API Key" to create a new API Key.
4. In the pop-up window, specify the API Key name and click "Create". Note the API Key as you can never access it again from the dashboard.

Cloud Object Storage CRN

If you have multiple accounts, you will need to specify the CloudObjectStorageCRN explicitly. To find the appropriate value, you can:

• Query the Services view. This will list your IBM Cloud Object Storage instances along with the CRN for each.
• Locate the CRN directly in IBM Cloud. To do so, navigate to your IBM Cloud Dashboard. In the Resource List, Under Storage, select your Cloud Object Storage resource to get its CRN.

Connecting to Data

You can now set the following to connect to data:

• InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
• ApiKey: Set this to your API key which was noted during setup.
• CloudObjectStorageCRN (Optional): Set this to the cloud object storage CRN you want to work with. While the connector attempts to retrieve this automatically, specifying this explicitly is recommended if you have more than Cloud Object Storage account.

When you connect, the connector completes the OAuth process.

1. Extracts the access token and authenticates requests.
2. Saves OAuth values in OAuthSettingsLocation to be persisted across connections.

How to Query IBM Cloud Object Storage Tables

Follow the steps below to build a query to pull IBM Cloud Object Storage data into the report:

1. Open Power BI Desktop and click Get Data -> Other -> CData IBMCloudObjectStorage.
2. Select CData PowerBI IBM Cloud Object Storage in the Data Source Name menu and select a data connectivity mode:
   Select Import if you want to import a copy of the data into your project. You can refresh this data on demand.
   Select DirectQuery if you want to work with the remote data.
3. Select tables in the Navigator dialog.

4. In the Query Editor, you can customize your dataset by filtering, sorting, and summarizing IBM Cloud Object Storage columns. Click Edit to open the query editor. Right-click a row to filter the rows. Right-click a column header to perform actions like the following:

   • Change column data types
   • Remove a column
   • Group by columns

   Power BI detects each column's data type from the IBM Cloud Object Storage metadata retrieved by the connector.

   Power BI records your modifications to the query in the Applied Steps section, adjusting the underlying data retrieval query that is executed to the remote IBM Cloud Object Storage data. When you click Close and Apply, Power BI executes the data retrieval query.

   Otherwise, click Load to pull the data into Power BI.

How to Create Data Visualizations in Power BI

After pulling the data into Power BI, you can create data visualizations in the Report view by dragging fields from the Fields pane onto the canvas. Follow the steps below to create a pie chart:

1. Select the pie chart icon in the Visualizations pane.
2. Select a dimension in the Fields pane: for example, Key.
3. Select a measure in the Fields pane: for example, Etag.

You can change sort options by clicking the ellipsis (...) button for the chart. Options to select the sort column and change the sort order are displayed.

You can use both highlighting and filtering to focus on data. Filtering removes unfocused data from visualizations; highlighting dims unfocused data. You can highlight fields by clicking them:

You can apply filters at the page level, at the report level, or to a single visualization by dragging fields onto the Filters pane. To filter on the field's value, select one of the values that are displayed in the Filters pane.

Click Refresh to synchronize your report with any changes to the data.

At this point, you will have a Power BI report built on top of live IBM Cloud Object Storage data. Learn more about the CData Power BI Connectors for IBM Cloud Object Storage and download a free trial from the CData Power BI Connector for IBM Cloud Object Storage page. Let our Support Team know if you have any questions.