Create Zuora Dashboards in Bold BI

Bold BI allows you to create, share, and collaborate on interactive BI dashboards. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant access to Zuora data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Zuora and build reports from Zuora data in Bold BI.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Zuora, allowing you to easily build reports from live Zuora data in Bold BI — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build visualizations, Bold BI 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 Zuora, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Zuora data.

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

   Zuora uses the OAuth standard to authenticate users. See the online Help documentation for a full OAuth authentication guide.

   Configuring Tenant property

   In order to create a valid connection with the provider you need to choose one of the Tenant values (USProduction by default) which matches your account configuration. The following is a list with the available options:

   • USProduction: Requests sent to https://rest.zuora.com.
   • USAPISandbox: Requests sent to https://rest.apisandbox.zuora.com"
   • USPerformanceTest: Requests sent to https://rest.pt1.zuora.com"
   • EUProduction: Requests sent to https://rest.eu.zuora.com"
   • EUSandbox: Requests sent to https://rest.sandbox.eu.zuora.com"

   Selecting a Zuora Service

   Two Zuora services are available: Data Query and AQuA API. By default ZuoraService is set to AQuADataExport.

   DataQuery

   The Data Query feature enables you to export data from your Zuora tenant by performing asynchronous, read-only SQL queries. We recommend to use this service for quick lightweight SQL queries.

   Limitations
   • The maximum number of input records per table after filters have been applied: 1,000,000
   • The maximum number of output records: 100,000
   • The maximum number of simultaneous queries submitted for execution per tenant: 5
   • The maximum number of queued queries submitted for execution after reaching the limitation of simultaneous queries per tenant: 10
   • The maximum processing time for each query in hours: 1
   • The maximum size of memory allocated to each query in GB: 2
   • The maximum number of indices when using Index Join, in other words, the maximum number of records being returned by the left table based on the unique value used in the WHERE clause when using Index Join: 20,000

   AQuADataExport

   AQuA API export is designed to export all the records for all the objects ( tables ). AQuA query jobs have the following limitations:

   Limitations
   • If a query in an AQuA job is executed longer than 8 hours, this job will be killed automatically.
   • The killed AQuA job can be retried three times before returned as failed.
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 Zuora data from Bold BI.

Visualize Live Zuora Data in Bold BI

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Server from Bold BI to create a new Zuora data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into your Bold BI instance, click the data sources tab, create a new data source, and choose the SQL Server connector.
2. Choose the basic configuration and set the connection properties:
   • Name: Name your connection
   • Server name: Your Connect Server instance (CONNECT_SERVER_URL)
   • Port: 1433
   • Username: Your Connect Server username
   • Password: Your Connect Server password
   • Mode: Choose Live to query Zuora on-demand or choose Extract to load the data into Bold BI
   • Database: Choose the database you created from the drop-down menu (zuoradb)
3. Click Connect
4. Select the table to visualize and drag it onto the workspace.
5. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
6. Click the gear icon for the visualization to configure the visualization properties and assign columns to the visualization.

SQL Access to Zuora Data from Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Zuora data from your Bold BI workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Zuora data.

To get SQL data access to 200+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your applications, see the CData Connect page.