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The Twitter ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Twitter, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

With the Twitter ODBC Driver accessing live Tweets, Followers, Messages, Searches, etc. is as easy as querying a database.

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Use the CData ODBC Driver for Twitter in SAS JMP


You can use the CData ODBC Driver to integrate Twitter data into the statistical analysis tools available in SAS JMP. This article shows how to use Twitter data in the Graph Builder and Query Builder.

You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Twitter to integrate live data into your statistical analysis with SAS JMP. The driver proxies your queries directly to the Twitter API, ensuring that your analysis reflects any changes to the data. The CData ODBC Driver supports the standard SQL used by JMP in the background as you design reports.

The Twitter API supports bidirectional access. This article shows how to access Twitter data into a report and create data visualization. It also shows how to use SQL to query and manipulate Twitter data from the JMP Query Builder.

Access Twitter Data as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

All tables require authentication. You can connect using your User and Password or OAuth. To authenticate using OAuth, you can use the embedded OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL or you can register an app to obtain your own.

If you intend to communicate with Twitter only as the currently authenticated user, then you can obtain the OAuthAccessToken and OAuthAccessTokenSecret directly by registering an app.

See the Getting Started chapter in the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

When you configure the DSN, 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.

Import Twitter Data with the Query Builder

After you have created the Twitter DSN, you can use SQL to invoke the capabilities of the Twitter API. Follow the steps below to execute some supported queries in the Query Builder:

  1. In SAS JMP, click File -> Database -> Query Builder. The Select Database Connection dialog is displayed.
  2. Click New Connection.
  3. On the Machine Data Source tab, select the DSN. In the next step, the Select Tables for Query dialog is displayed.
  4. In the Available Tables section, select a table and click Primary.
  5. As you drag Available Columns to the Included Columns tab, the underlying SQL query is updated.
  6. Click Run Query to display the data.
  7. To refresh the results with the current data, right-click Update from Database and click Run Script.

Manipulate Twitter Data

You can execute data manipulation queries from JSL scripts such as the one below. To execute a script, click New Script in the toolbar. To connect, specify the DSN. You can then use the standard SQL syntax:

Open Database( "DSN=CData Twitter Source;", "INSERT INTO Tweets (From_User_Name) VALUES ('twitter');");

Visualize Twitter Data

After importing, you can use the Graph Builder to create graphs visually. To open the Graph Builder, click the Graph Builder button in the toolbar.

  1. Drag a dimension column onto the x axis. For example, From_User_Name.
  2. Drag a measure column onto the y axis. For example, Retweet_Count.
  3. Select a chart type. For example, a bar chart.