Integrate ShipStation Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

The CData JDBC Driver for ShipStation data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to ShipStation data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on ShipStation 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 ShipStation connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

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

     Use the BASIC Authentication standard to connect.

     1. Login to your ShipStation account
     2. Click on the settings icon in the upper right corner. A column menu will show up on the left
     3. Click Account -> API Settings
     4. On the API Settings page, note the API Key and API Secret.

     Authenticating to ShipStation

     • APIKey: Set this to the API key from the API settings page.
     • APISecret: Set this to the Secret key from the API settings page.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

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

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.shipstation.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:shipstation:APIKey='YourAPIKey';APISecret='YourAPISecret'
   • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.shipstation.ShipStationDriver.
   • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with.

Add ShipStation Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with ShipStation data.

1. Add the ShipStation 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 Id, Color FROM Tags WHERE CustomerId = '1368175'
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 Tags table.
4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.