Integrate SAS Data Sets Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

The CData JDBC Driver for SAS Data Sets data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to SAS Data Sets data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on SAS Data Sets data in Pentaho.

Connect and Create a Report

1. Copy the JAR file of the driver, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory, to the \Report-Designer\lib\jdbc\ folder in the Pentaho directory.
2. Run the report-designer.bat file in the \Report-Designer\ folder to open the Report-Designer UI.

3. Create a new data source with the driver by clicking Data -> Add Data Source -> Advanced -> JDBC (Custom) and then creating a new SAS Data Sets connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

   • Custom Connection URL property: Enter the JDBC URL. This starts with jdbc:sasdatasets: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

     Set the following connection properties to connect to your SAS DataSet files:

     Connecting to Local Files

     • Set the Connection Type to "Local." Local files support SELECT, INSERT, and DELETE commands.
     • Set the URI to a folder containing SAS files, e.g. C:\PATH\TO\FOLDER\.

     Connecting to Cloud-Hosted SAS DataSet Files

     While the driver is capable of pulling data from SAS DataSet files hosted on a variety of cloud data stores, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE are not supported outside of local files in this driver.

     Set the Connection Type to the service hosting your SAS DataSet files. A unique prefix at the beginning of the URI connection property is used to identify the cloud data store and the remainder of the path is a relative path to the desired folder (one table per file) or single file (a single table). For more information, refer to the Getting Started section of the Help documentation.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the SAS Data Sets JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.sasdatasets.jar

     Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

     When you configure the JDBC URL, 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.

     Below is a typical JDBC URL:

     jdbc:sasdatasets:URI=C:/myfolder;
   • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.sasdatasets.SASDataSetsDriver.
   • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with.

Add SAS Data Sets Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with SAS Data Sets data.

1. Add the SAS Data Sets source to your report: Click Data -> Add Data Source -> JDBC and select the data source.

2. Configure the query. This article uses the one below:

   SELECT name, borough FROM restaurants WHERE cuisine = 'American'
3. Drag a chart onto your report and double-click it to edit the chart. Run the report to display the chart. You can use the results of this query to create a simple chart for the restaurants table.
4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.