How to Connect DBeaver to SQL Analysis Services via a JDBC Driver

The CData JDBC Driver for SQL Analysis Services implements JDBC standards that enable third-party tools to interoperate, from wizards in IDEs to business intelligence tools. This article shows how to connect to SQL Analysis Services data with wizards in DBeaver and browse data in the DBeaver GUI.

Create a JDBC Data Source for SQL Analysis Services Data

Follow the steps below to load the driver JAR in DBeaver.

1. Open the DBeaver application and, in the "Database" menu, select the "Driver Manager" option. Click "New" to open the "Create new driver" form.
2. In the Settings tab:
   • Set Driver Name to a user-friendly name for the driver (e.g. CData JDBC Driver for SQL Analysis Services).
   • Set Class Name to the class name for the JDBC driver: cdata.jdbc.ssas.SSASDriver.
   • Set URL Template to jdbc:ssas:.
3. In the Libraries tab, click "Add File," navigate to the "lib" folder in the installation directory (C:\Program Files\CData[product_name] XXXX\) and select the JAR file (cdata.jdbc.SSAS.jar).

Create a Connection to SQL Analysis Services Data

Follow the steps below to add credentials and other required connection properties.

1. In the "Database" menu, click "New Database Connection."
2. In the "Connect to a database" wizard that results, select the driver you just created (e.g. CData JDBC Driver for SQL Analysis Services) and click "Next >."
3. On the Main tab of the configuration wizard, set the JDBC URL, using the required connection properties:

   To connect, provide authentication and set the Url property to a valid SQL Server Analysis Services endpoint. You can connect to SQL Server Analysis Services instances hosted over HTTP with XMLA access. See the Microsoft documentation to configure HTTP access to SQL Server Analysis Services.

   To secure connections and authenticate, set the corresponding connection properties, below. The data provider supports the major authentication schemes, including HTTP and Windows, as well as SSL/TLS.

   • HTTP Authentication

     Set AuthScheme to "Basic" or "Digest" and set User and Password. Specify other authentication values in CustomHeaders.

   • Windows (NTLM)

     Set the Windows User and Password and set AuthScheme to "NTLM".

   • Kerberos and Kerberos Delegation

     To authenticate with Kerberos, set AuthScheme to NEGOTIATE. To use Kerberos delegation, set AuthScheme to KERBEROSDELEGATION. If needed, provide the User, Password, and KerberosSPN. By default, the data provider attempts to communicate with the SPN at the specified Url.

   • SSL/TLS:

     By default, the data provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats.

   You can then access any cube as a relational table: When you connect the data provider retrieves SSAS metadata and dynamically updates the table schemas. Instead of retrieving metadata every connection, you can set the CacheLocation property to automatically cache to a simple file-based store.

   See the Getting Started section of the CData documentation, under Retrieving Analysis Services Data, to execute SQL-92 queries to the cubes.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.ssas.jar

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

   Below is a typical connection string:

   jdbc:ssas:User=myuseraccount;Password=mypassword;URL=http://localhost/OLAP/msmdpump.dll;
4. Click "Test Connection ..." to ensure you have configured the connection properly.
5. Click "Finish."

Query SQL Analysis Services Data

You can now query information from the tables exposed by the connection: Right-click a Table and then click View Table. The data is available on the Data tab.

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