Explore Geographical Relationships in Cosmos DB Data with Power Map

The CData ODBC Driver for Cosmos DB is easy to set up and use with self-service analytics solutions like Power BI: Microsoft Excel provides built-in support for the ODBC standard. This article shows how to load the current Cosmos DB data into Excel and start generating location-based insights on Cosmos DB data in Power Map.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Cosmos DB

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.

To obtain the connection string needed to connect to a Cosmos DB account using the SQL API, log in to the Azure Portal, select Azure Cosmos DB, and select your account. In the Settings section, click Connection String and set the following values:

• AccountEndpoint: The Cosmos DB account URL from the Keys blade of the Cosmos DB account
• AccountKey: In the Azure portal, navigate to the Cosmos DB service and select your Azure Cosmos DB account. From the resource menu, go to the Keys page. Find the PRIMARY KEY value and set AccountKey to this value.

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.

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 Cosmos DB Data into Excel

You can import data into Power Map either from an Excel spreadsheet or from Power Pivot. For a step-by-step guide to use either method to import Cosmos DB data, see the "Using the ODBC Driver" section in the help documentation.

Geocode Cosmos DB Data

After importing the Cosmos DB data into an Excel spreadsheet or into PowerPivot, you can drag and drop Cosmos DB entities in Power Map. To open Power Map, click any cell in the spreadsheet and click Insert -> Map.

In the Choose Geography menu, Power Map detects the columns that have geographic information. In the Geography and Map Level menu in the Layer Pane, you can select the columns you want to work with. Power Map then plots the data. A dot represents a record that has this value. When you have selected the geographic columns you want, click Next.

Select Measures and Categories

You can then simply select columns: Measures and categories are automatically detected. The available chart types are Stacked Column, Clustered Column, Bubble, Heat Map, and Region.