Explore Geographical Relationships in Discourse Data with Power Map

The CData ODBC Driver for Discourse 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 Discourse data into Excel and start generating location-based insights on Discourse data in Power Map.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Discourse

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.

The Discourse API uses API Key authentication.

Using API Key Authentication

Discourse requires API Key and Username for authentication. API Keys are generated in the Discourse Admin panel under the API section. You can create user-specific API keys or all-users API keys. Once you have obtained the API Key, set it along with the Domain and Username in the ProfileSettings connection property.

Example Connection string

Profile=C:\profiles\Discourse.apip;ProfileSettings='Domain=forum.example.com;APIKey=your_api_key;Username=your_username;'AuthScheme=APIKey;

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 Discourse 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 Discourse data, see the "Using the ODBC Driver" section in the help documentation.

Geocode Discourse Data

After importing the Discourse data into an Excel spreadsheet or into PowerPivot, you can drag and drop Discourse 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.