Build OData Visualizations in Tableau Desktop

About OData Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live OData services data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

Access OData versions 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0, working with legacy services and the latest features and capabilities.

Leverage advanced query options, including $filter, $select, and $expand, enhancing data retrieval from 3rd party tools.

Use Server-side execution of aggregation and grouping to minimize data transfer and boost performance.

Authenticate securely using a variety of schemes, including Azure AD, digest, negotiate, NTLM, OAuth, and more means secure authentication with every connection.

Use SQL stored procedures to manage OData service entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

Customers use CData's solutions to regularly integrate their OData services with preferred tools, such as Power BI, MicroStrategy, or Tableau, and to replicate data from OData services to their databases or data warehouses.

Getting Started

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for OData, allowing you to easily build visualizations from live OData services in Tableau without installing connectors. As you build visualizations, Tableau generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to OData, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return OData services.

Configure OData Connectivity for Tableau

Connectivity to OData from Tableau is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with OData services from Tableau, we start by creating and configuring a OData connection.

Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection

Select "OData" from the Add Connection panel

Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to OData.

The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid OData user credentials. In addition, you will need to specify a URL to a valid OData server organization root or OData services file.

Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)

Click Create & Test

Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add OData Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.

On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.

Give your PAT a name and click Create.

The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to OData services from Tableau.

Visualize Live OData Services in Tableau

To establish a connection from Tableau Desktop to the CData Connect Cloud Virtual SQL Server API, follow these steps.

In Tableau Desktop, open a new book. Under To a Server, select More, then Microsoft SQL Server.

Selecting Microsoft SQL Server as the connection type.

Enter your credentials:

Server: enter the Virtual SQL Server endpoint and port separated by a comma: tds.cdata.com,14333
Database: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect Cloud data source you want to connect to (for example, OData1).
Authentication: select Use a specific username and password.
Username: enter your CData Connect Cloud username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect Cloud interface. For example, [email protected].
Password: enter the PAT you previously generated.
Require SSL: leave this selected.

Configuring the connection to the Virtual SQL Server API.

Click Sign In.

Select the Database (Connect Cloud connection) you wish to work with and opt for a Live or Extract Connection type.

Select the table(s) you wish to visualize. If you select multiple tables, define the relationship between the tables using the appropriate columns.

Selecting tables to visualize (Salesforce is shown)

Select the fields to visualize.

Visualizing live data (Salesforce is shown).

Real-Time Access to OData Services from Data Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live OData services from your Tableau workbook. You can create new visualizations, build dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining live access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from applications like Tableau, refer to our Connect Cloud page.