Explore Geographical Relationships in SAP ByDesign Data with Power Map

The CData ODBC Driver for SAP ByDesign 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 SAP ByDesign data into Excel and start generating location-based insights on SAP ByDesign data in Power Map.

Create an ODBC Data Source for SAP ByDesign

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.

Set the following connection properties to connect to SAP ByDesign.

• Url: Set this to the Url of your SAP ByDesign site. For example, https://test.sapbydesign.com
• User: Set this to the username of your account.
• Password: Set this to the password of your account.
• CustomService or AnalyticsService: Only one of these must be specified. If you have a custom service you want to retrieve data from, specify CustomService. If you want to retrieve the reports of a analytical service, specify AnalyticsService.
  If neither is specified, 'cc_home_analytics.svc' will used as a default for the AnalyticsService property. If you are not sure what service to specify, you can always query the Services view to list available services.

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 SAP ByDesign 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 SAP ByDesign data, see the "Using the ODBC Driver" section in the help documentation.

Geocode SAP ByDesign Data

After importing the SAP ByDesign data into an Excel spreadsheet or into PowerPivot, you can drag and drop SAP ByDesign 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.