Build Power BI XMLA-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 Power BI XMLA data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Power BI XMLA and build visualizations from Power BI XMLA data in Redash.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Power BI XMLA, allowing you to easily build reports from live Power BI XMLA 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 Power BI XMLA, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Power BI XMLA data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for Power BI XMLA 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 "Power BI XMLA" from Available Data Sources.
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Power BI XMLA.

   By default, use Azure AD to connect to Microsoft Power BI XMLA. Azure AD is Microsoft’s multi-tenant, cloud-based directory and identity management service. It is user-based authentication that requires that you set AuthScheme to AzureAD.

   For more information on other authentication schemes, refer to the Help documentation.

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 Power BI XMLA data from Redash.

Visualize Power BI XMLA Data in Redash

The steps below outline creating a new data source in Redash based on the virtual Power BI XMLA 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. Power BI XMLA (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 Power BI XMLA (e.g. PowerBIXMLA1)
   • 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 Power BI XMLA data.

Create a Power BI XMLA 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 Country, Education FROM Customer WHERE Country = 'Australia'
4. Click the "Execute" button to load Power BI XMLA data into Redash via CData Connect
5. Use the Visualization Editor to create and analyze graphs from Power BI XMLA data
6. You can schedule the query to refresh and update the visualization periodically

SQL Access to Power BI XMLA Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to Power BI XMLA 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.