Analyze Gong Data in R via JDBC

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use standard R functions and the development environment of your choice to analyze Gong data with the CData JDBC Driver for Gong.

Access Gong 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 Gong and the RJDBC package to work with remote Gong 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 Gong and visualize Gong 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 Gong as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to Gong as a JDBC data source:

  • Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver
  • 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 Gong:

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

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

To authenticate to Gong, you can use API Key authentication with your Gong API Key and API Secret.

Authentication

To authenticate to Gong, you must provide your Gong API Key and API Secret, along with your tenant Domain. These credentials are combined and Base64-encoded to form the Basic authentication header used for all API requests.

Using API Key Authentication

To authenticate using an API Key, you need to obtain your API Key and API Secret from your Gong account settings.

You can then connect by setting the AuthScheme to APIKey and providing your credentials:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
  • APIKey: Set this to your Gong API Key.
  • APISecret: Set this to your Gong API Secret.
  • Domain: Set this to your Gong tenant domain (e.g., us-36533.api.gong.io).

Example connection string

Profile=C:\profiles\Gong.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;APISecret=your_api_secret;Domain=your-tenant.api.gong.io';

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

java -jar cdata.jdbc.api.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:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Gong.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;APISecret=your_api_secret;Domain=your-tenant.api.gong.io';")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Gong 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 Gong API:

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

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

View(answeredscorecards)

Plot Gong Data

You can now analyze Gong 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(answeredscorecards$, main="Gong AnsweredScorecards", names.arg = answeredscorecards$, horiz=TRUE)

Ready to get started?

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