Analyze Power BI XMLA Data in R

Access Power BI XMLA data with pure R script and standard SQL on any machine where R and Java can be installed. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for Power BI XMLA and the RJDBC package to work with remote Power BI XMLA data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Power BI XMLA and visualize Power BI XMLA data by calling standard R functions.

Install R

You can match the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running open R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open 3.2.3, which is preconfigured to install packages from the Jan. 1, 2016 snapshot of the CRAN repository. This snapshot ensures reproducibility.

Load the RJDBC Package

To use the driver, download the RJDBC package. After installing the RJDBC package, the following line loads the package:

Connect to Power BI XMLA as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to Power BI XMLA as a JDBC data source:

• Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.powerbixmla.PowerBIXMLADriver
• Classpath: Set this to the location of the driver JAR. By default this is the lib subfolder of the installation folder.

The DBI functions, such as dbConnect and dbSendQuery, provide a unified interface for writing data access code in R. Use the following line to initialize a DBI driver that can make JDBC requests to the CData JDBC Driver for Power BI XMLA:

You can now use DBI functions to connect to Power BI XMLA and execute SQL queries. Initialize the JDBC connection with the dbConnect function.

By default, use Azure AD to connect to Microsoft Power BI XMLA. Azure AD is Microsoft’s multi-tenant, cloud-based directory and identity management service. It is user-based authentication that requires that you set AuthScheme to AzureAD.

For more information on other authentication schemes, refer to the Help documentation.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

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

Below is a sample dbConnect call, including a typical JDBC connection string:

Schema Discovery

The driver models Power BI XMLA APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Power BI XMLA API:

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

Plot Power BI XMLA Data

You can now analyze Power BI XMLA data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function: