Analyze Oracle Eloqua Reporting Data in R via JDBC

Access Oracle Eloqua Reporting data with pure R script and standard SQL on any machine where R and Java can be installed. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for Oracle Eloqua Reporting and the RJDBC package to work with remote Oracle Eloqua Reporting data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Oracle Eloqua Reporting and visualize Oracle Eloqua Reporting data by calling standard R functions.

Install R

You can match the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running open R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open 3.2.3, which is preconfigured to install packages from the Jan. 1, 2016 snapshot of the CRAN repository. This snapshot ensures reproducibility.

Load the RJDBC Package

To use the driver, download the RJDBC package. After installing the RJDBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RJDBC)

Connect to Oracle Eloqua Reporting as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to Oracle Eloqua Reporting as a JDBC data source:

• Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.oracleeloquareporting.OracleEloquaReportingDriver
• Classpath: Set this to the location of the driver JAR. By default this is the lib subfolder of the installation folder.

The DBI functions, such as dbConnect and dbSendQuery, provide a unified interface for writing data access code in R. Use the following line to initialize a DBI driver that can make JDBC requests to the CData JDBC Driver for Oracle Eloqua Reporting:

driver <- JDBC(driverClass = "cdata.jdbc.oracleeloquareporting.OracleEloquaReportingDriver", classPath = "MyInstallationDir\lib\cdata.jdbc.oracleeloquareporting.jar", identifier.quote = "'") 

You can now use DBI functions to connect to Oracle Eloqua Reporting and execute SQL queries. Initialize the JDBC connection with the dbConnect function.

Oracle Eloqua Reporting supports the following authentication methods:

• Basic authentication (User and Password)
• OAuth 2.0 code grant flow
• OAuth 2.0 password grant flow

Basic Authentication (User and Password)

To perform authentication with a user and password, specify these properties:

• AuthScheme: Basic.
• Company: The company name associated with your Oracle Eloqua Reporting account.
• User: Your login account name.
• Password: Your login password.

OAuth Authentication (Code Grant Flow)

To authenticate with the OAuth code grant flow, you must set AuthScheme to OAuth and create a custom OAuth application. For information about how to create a custom OAuth application, see the Help documentation.

Then set the following properties:

• InitiateOAuth: GETANDREFRESH. Used to automatically get and refresh the OAuthAccessToken.
• OAuthClientId: The client Id assigned when you registered your application.
• OAuthClientSecret: The client secret that was assigned when you registered your application.
• CallbackURL: The redirect URI that was defined when you registered your application.

When you connect, the driver opens Oracle Eloqua Reporting's OAuth endpoint in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions to the application. When the access token expires, the driver refreshes it automatically.

OAuth Authentication (Password Grant Flow)

With the OAuth password grant flow, you can use your OAuth application's credentials alongside your user credentials to authenticate without the need to grant permission manually via a browser prompt. You must create an OAuth app (see the Help documentation) to use this authentication method.

Set the following properties:

• AuthScheme: OAuthPassword
• Company: The company's unique identifier.
• User: Your login account name.
• Password: Your login password.
• OAuthClientId: The client Id assigned when you registered your custom OAuth application.
• OAuthClientSecret: The client secret assigned when you registered your custom OAuth application.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

java -jar cdata.jdbc.oracleeloquareporting.jar

Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

Below is a sample dbConnect call, including a typical JDBC connection string:

conn <- dbConnect(driver,"jdbc:oracleeloquareporting:AuthScheme=Basic;User=user;Password=password;Company=MyCompany;")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Oracle Eloqua Reporting APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

dbListTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Oracle Eloqua Reporting API:

 <- dbGetQuery(conn,"SELECT ,  FROM  WHERE  = ''")

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View()

Plot Oracle Eloqua Reporting Data

You can now analyze Oracle Eloqua Reporting data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot($, main="Oracle Eloqua Reporting ", names.arg = $, horiz=TRUE)