Browserless Reporting and Star Schemas in OBIEE

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Create a star schema that shows perspectives on Browserless facts in real time.

The CData ODBC Driver for Browserless is a standard database driver that can integrate real-time access to Browserless data into your data warehouse or directly into your reporting tool. This article shows how to bypass the data warehouse and import operational Browserless data into Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE).

See the knowledge base for ODBC integrations with ETL tools like Informatica PowerCenter. For an ETL solution into Oracle Warehouse Builder, use the driver with the Oracle ODBC Gateway to Access Browserless Data as a Remote Oracle Database.

Connect to Browserless 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.

Browserless uses HTTP API token authentication. Your Browserless API token is sent as the token query parameter on every request. You can generate or view your token in the Browserless dashboard at https://account.browserless.io/.

Using ApiKey Authentication

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
  • APIKey: Set this to your Browserless API token.

Example connection string:

Profile=C:\profiles\Browserless.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="ApiKey=your_api_token";

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 Browserless Metadata

Follow the steps below to use the OBIEE Client Tools to import Browserless metadata into an OBIEE repository. You can then integrate Browserless data into your business models.

  1. Open the Administration Tool and click File -> New Repository.

  2. In the Connection Type menu, select ODBC 3.5 and select the CData DSN.
  3. Select the metadata types you want to import under the Relational Sources option and then select Browserless tables.
You can now create star schemas based on Browserless tables:

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Browserless with the API Driver

Connect to Browserless