Build PayPal-Connected Dashboards in Redash

Redash lets you connect and query your data sources, build dashboards to visualize data and share them with your company. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to PayPal data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for PayPal and build visualizations from PayPal data in Redash.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for PayPal, allowing you to easily build reports from live PayPal data in Redash — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build visualizations, Redash generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Server pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to PayPal, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested PayPal data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for PayPal Data

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

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

   The provider surfaces tables from two PayPal APIs. The APIs use different authentication methods.

   • The REST API uses the OAuth standard. To authenticate to the REST API, you will need to set the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL properties.
   • The Classic API requires Signature API credentials. To authenticate to the Classic API, you will need to obtain an API username, password, and signature.

   See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the necessary API credentials.

   To select the API you want to work with, you can set the Schema property to REST or SOAP. By default the SOAP schema will be used.

   For testing purposes you can set UseSandbox to true and use sandbox credentials.

4. Click Save Changes
5. Click Privileges -> Add and add the new user (or an existing user) with the appropriate permissions.

With the virtual database created, you are ready to connect to PayPal data from Redash.

Visualize PayPal Data in Redash

The steps below outline creating a new data source in Redash based on the virtual PayPal database in Connect Server and building a simple visualization from the data.

Create a New Data Source

1. Log into Redash, click on your profile and click "Data Sources"
2. Click the " New Data Source" button
3. Select "Microsoft SQL Server" as the Data Source Type
4. On the configuration tab, set the following properties:
   • Name: Name the data source (e.g. PayPal (CData Connect))
   • Host: The full URL to your CData Connect instance (e.g. https://connect_server_url)
   • Port: The port of the CData Connect SQL Server endpoint (e.g. 1433)
   • User: A CData Connect user
   • Password: The password for the above user
   • Database name: The name of the virtual database for PayPal (e.g. PayPal1)
   • Click the checkbox to Use SSQL
5. Click Create
6. Click the "Test Connection" button to ensure you have configured the connection properly

With the new Data Source created, we are ready to visualize our PayPal data.

Create a PayPal Data Visualization

1. Click Create -> New Query
2. Select the newly created Data Source (you can explore the data structure in the New Query wizard)
3. Write a SQL statement to retrieve the data, for example:
   SELECT Date, GrossAmount FROM Transactions
4. Click the "Execute" button to load PayPal data into Redash via CData Connect
5. Use the Visualization Editor to create and analyze graphs from PayPal data
6. You can schedule the query to refresh and update the visualization periodically

SQL Access to PayPal Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to PayPal data from Redash. You can create new visualizations, build dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining SQL access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from cloud applications like Redash, refer to our Connect Server page.