Customer.io Reporting and Star Schemas in OBIEE

Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism

Create a star schema that shows perspectives on Customer.io facts in real time.

The CData ODBC Driver for Customer.io is a standard database driver that can integrate real-time access to Customer.io data into your data warehouse or directly into your reporting tool. This article shows how to bypass the data warehouse and import operational Customer.io 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 Customer.io Data as a Remote Oracle Database.

Connect to Customer.io 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.

Using API Key Authentication

To obtain your Customer.io App API Key, navigate to the Customer.io UI under Data & Integrations > Integrations > Customer.io API and generate your API key.

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

AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
APIKey: Set this to your Customer.io App API Key.

Example Connection String

Profile=C:\profiles\CustomerIO.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your_api_key";

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 Customer.io Metadata

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

Open the Administration Tool and click File -> New Repository.
In the Connection Type menu, select ODBC 3.5 and select the CData DSN.
Select the metadata types you want to import under the Relational Sources option and then select Customer.io tables.

You can now create star schemas based on Customer.io tables: Fact and dimension tables. (Salesforce is shown.)

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Customer.io with the API Driver

Connect to Customer.io

CData is the data layer that makes AI work in production—live connectivity and replication across hundreds of the most critical enterprise sources, semantic context, and built-in governance. Powering AI for Databricks, Microsoft, Google, Palantir, and 10,000+ customers worldwide.