Design BIRT Reports on BigQuery Data



Provide current BigQuery data to your embedded analytics.

The CData JDBC Driver for BigQuery integrates connectivity to BigQuery APIs into your data-driven Java applications. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for BigQuery with the BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tools) platform to create BIRT reports that reflect changes to your data in real time.

About BigQuery Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live Google BigQuery data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Simplify access to BigQuery with broad out-of-the-box support for authentication schemes, including OAuth, OAuth JWT, and GCP Instance.
  • Enhance data workflows with Bi-directional data access between BigQuery and other applications.
  • Perform key BigQuery actions like starting, retrieving, and canceling jobs; deleting tables; or insert job loads through SQL stored procedures.

Most CData customers are using Google BigQuery as their data warehouse and so use CData solutions to migrate business data from separate sources into BigQuery for comprehensive analytics. Other customers use our connectivity to analyze and report on their Google BigQuery data, with many customers using both solutions.

For more details on how CData enhances your Google BigQuery experience, check out our blog post: https://www.cdata.com/blog/what-is-bigquery


Getting Started


  1. If you have not already done so, install the BIRT Framework plugin and the Database Development plugin for Eclipse.
  2. Click File -> New -> Report. The Report Design perspective is opened.
  3. In the Data Explorer, right-click Data Sources and click New Data Source.
  4. Select the Create from a Data Source Type in the Following List option and select JDBC Data Source.
  5. Click Manage Drivers and add the driver JAR, located in the lib subfolder of the installation folder.
  6. In the Database URL box, enter the JDBC URL containing the connection string.

    Google uses the OAuth authentication standard. To access Google APIs on behalf of individual users, you can use the embedded credentials or you can register your own OAuth app.

    OAuth also enables you to use a service account to connect on behalf of users in a Google Apps domain. To authenticate with a service account, you will need to register an application to obtain the OAuth JWT values.

    In addition to the OAuth values, you will need to specify the DatasetId and ProjectId. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

    Built-in Connection String Designer

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

    java -jar cdata.jdbc.googlebigquery.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.

    A typical JDBC URL is below:

    jdbc:googlebigquery:DataSetId=MyDataSetId;ProjectId=MyProjectId;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH
  7. Right-click the Data Sets folder and select the JDBC data source for BigQuery.
  8. In the resulting dialog, build the SELECT query to be used to retrieve the data for the report. This article uses the following query: SELECT OrderName, Freight FROM Orders
  9. In the Palette, drag a Chart onto the editor. The chart wizard is displayed.
  10. After selecting the chart type, drag columns onto the chart fields on the Select Data tab.
  11. Click Run -> View Report -> In Web Viewer to view the report.

Your BIRT reports can now pick up any updates to BigQuery data.

To publish the report to your application server, add the driver JAR to the BIRT Viewer's classpath. For more information, see the CData KB for guides to deploying the JDBC Driver on Java application servers.

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the Google BigQuery Driver to get started:

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Rapidly create and deploy powerful Java applications that integrate with Google BigQuery data including Tables and Datasets.