Use the CData ODBC Driver for Adobe Commerce in MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy is an analytics and mobility platform that enables data-driven innovation. When you pair MicroStrategy with the CData ODBC Driver for Adobe Commerce, you gain database-like access to live Adobe Commerce data from MicroStrategy, expanding your reporting and analytics capabilities. In this article, we walk through creating a database instance for Adobe Commerce in MicroStrategy Developer and creating a Warehouse Catalog based on Adobe Commerce data.

The CData ODBC Driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live Adobe Commerce data in MicroStrategy due to optimized data processing built into the driver. When you issue complex SQL queries from MicroStrategy to Adobe Commerce, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Adobe Commerce 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 Adobe Commerce data using native MicroStrategy data types.

Connect to Adobe Commerce as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to Adobe Commerce follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments (the ODBC Driver for Adobe Commerce must be installed on the machine hosting the connected MicroStrategy Intelligence Server).

Adobe Commerce uses the OAuth 1 authentication standard. To connect to the Adobe Commerce REST API, you will need to obtain values for the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties by registering an app with your Adobe Commerce system. See the "Getting Started" section in the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the OAuth values and connecting.

You will also need to provide the URL to your Adobe Commerce system. The URL depends on whether you are using the Adobe Commerce REST API as a customer or administrator.

• Customer: To use Adobe Commerce as a customer, make sure you have created a customer account in the Adobe Commerce homepage. To do so, click Account -> Register. You can then set the URL connection property to the endpoint of your Adobe Commerce system.

• Administrator: To access Adobe Commerce as an administrator, set CustomAdminPath instead. This value can be obtained in the Advanced settings in the Admin menu, which can be accessed by selecting System -> Configuration -> Advanced -> Admin -> Admin Base URL.

  If the Use Custom Admin Path setting on this page is set to YES, the value is inside the Custom Admin Path text box; otherwise, set the CustomAdminPath connection property to the default value, which is "admin".

When you configure the DSN, 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.

Windows

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for Adobe Commerce in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Create a Adobe Commerce Database Instance in MicroStrategy Developer

You can connect to Adobe Commerce in MicroStrategy Developer by adding a database instance based on the CData ODBC Driver for Adobe Commerce.^*

1. Open MicroStrategy Developer and select a Project Source.
2. Navigate to Administration -> Configuration Managers -> Database Instances and right-click to add a new instance.
3. Name the instance, select Generic DBMS as the database connection type, and create a new database connection.
4. In the database connection wizard, name the connection and create a new Database Login name, using filler values for the user and password.
5. Select the DSN that you configured earlier as the ODBC data source (i.e., CData Adobe Commerce Sys).
6. Select the newly created database connection.
7. In the Project Source, right-click the project and open the Project configuration.
8. Navigate to Database Instances and select the newly created database instance.
9. Close MicroStrategy Developer and restart the connected MicroStrategy Intelligence Server to complete the database instance creation.

With the database instance configured, you will now be able to connect to Adobe Commerce data from the Warehouse Catalog and Data Import.

Connect to Adobe Commerce Data from the Warehouse Catalog

Once you have created a database instance based on the ODBC Driver for Adobe Commerce, you can connect to data from the Warehouse Catalog.

1. Select your project and click Schema -> Warehouse Catalog.
2. In the Read Settings for the Catalog, click Settings and set the queries to retrieve the schema:
   • To retrieve the list of tables, use the following query:

     SELECT 
       CatalogName NAME_SPACE,
       TableName TAB_NAME 
     FROM 
       SYS_TABLES
             

   • To retrieve the list of columns for selected tables, use the following query:

     SELECT DISTINCT 
       CatalogName NAME_SPACE, 
       TableName TAB_NAME, 
       ColumnName COL_NAME, 
       DataTypeName DATA_TYPE, 
       Length DATA_LEN, 
       NumericPrecision DATA_PREC, 
       NumericScale DATA_SCALE 
     FROM 
       SYS_TABLECOLUMNS 
     WHERE 
       TableName IN (#TABLE_LIST#) 
     ORDER BY
       1,2,3
             

3. Select tables to be used in the project.

If you are interested in connecting to Adobe Commerce from other MicroStrategy products, you can read about connecting from MicroStrategy Web and connecting from MicroStrategy Desktop.

Note: connecting using a ODBC driver requires a 3- or 4-tier architecture.