Design BIRT Reports on Anaplan Data

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

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.

   Authenticating to Anaplan

   The driver supports authenticating with Basic, Certificate, or OAuth. In every case, set Region to the region where your Anaplan account data is hosted (e.g., US1, which is the default).

   Using Basic Authentication

   Set AuthScheme to Basic, then supply your Anaplan User and Password. If your workspace uses single sign-on (SSO), you must be assigned as an Exception User to use Basic authentication.

   Using Certificate Authentication

   Set AuthScheme to Certificate, then supply the Certificate, CertificateType, and PrivateKey properties (and the matching CertificatePassword / PrivateKeyPassword if either is encrypted). The certificate must be a CA-issued X.509 certificate registered with your Anaplan tenant administrator.

   Using OAuth Authentication

   Register a custom OAuth application in Anaplan, then set the following properties:

   • OAuthClientId: The client Id assigned when you registered your custom OAuth application.
   • OAuthClientSecret: The client secret assigned when you registered your custom OAuth application.
   • CallbackURL: The redirect URI defined when you registered your application.
   • InitiateOAuth: Set to GETANDREFRESH to have the driver manage the OAuth token exchange and refresh automatically.

   See the Getting Started chapter of the help documentation for a guide to creating a custom OAuth app and using OAuth.

   Built-in Connection String Designer

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

   java -jar cdata.jdbc.anaplan.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:anaplan:OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;CallbackURL=your_callback_url;Region=US1;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;
   

7. Right-click the Data Sets folder and select the JDBC data source for Anaplan.
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 Region, Product FROM [Workspace].[Model].[Sales] WHERE Value = '100'
   

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 Anaplan 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.