Explore Geographical Relationships in Redshift Data with Power Map

The CData ODBC Driver for Redshift is easy to set up and use with self-service analytics solutions like Power BI: Microsoft Excel provides built-in support for the ODBC standard. This article shows how to load the current Redshift data into Excel and start generating location-based insights on Redshift data in Power Map.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Redshift

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.

To connect to Redshift, set the following:

• Server: Set this to the host name or IP address of the cluster hosting the Database you want to connect to.
• Port: Set this to the port of the cluster.
• Database: Set this to the name of the database. Or, leave this blank to use the default database of the authenticated user.
• User: Set this to the username you want to use to authenticate to the Server.
• Password: Set this to the password you want to use to authenticate to the Server.

You can obtain the Server and Port values in the AWS Management Console:

1. Open the Amazon Redshift console (http://console.aws.amazon.com/redshift).
2. On the Clusters page, click the name of the cluster.
3. On the Configuration tab for the cluster, copy the cluster URL from the connection strings displayed.

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.

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.

Import Redshift Data into Excel

You can import data into Power Map either from an Excel spreadsheet or from Power Pivot. For a step-by-step guide to use either method to import Redshift data, see the "Using the ODBC Driver" section in the help documentation.

Geocode Redshift Data

After importing the Redshift data into an Excel spreadsheet or into PowerPivot, you can drag and drop Redshift entities in Power Map. To open Power Map, click any cell in the spreadsheet and click Insert -> Map.

In the Choose Geography menu, Power Map detects the columns that have geographic information. In the Geography and Map Level menu in the Layer Pane, you can select the columns you want to work with. Power Map then plots the data. A dot represents a record that has this value. When you have selected the geographic columns you want, click Next.

Select Measures and Categories

You can then simply select columns: Measures and categories are automatically detected. The available chart types are Stacked Column, Clustered Column, Bubble, Heat Map, and Region.