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Get the Report →Import and Visualize IBM Cloud Object Storage Data in Power View
Create data visualizations based on IBM Cloud Object Storage data in Excel.
NOTE: For Excel for the web (Excel 365) and Excel 2019 or higher, Power View is no longer supported. Microsoft encourages the use of Power BI for those users. Please read our article on working with IBM Cloud Object Storage in Power BI using our Power BI connector for more information.
You can use the built-in ODBC support in Excel to rapidly create Power View reports featuring IBM Cloud Object Storage data. This article shows how to use the Data Connection Wizard, accessible from the Data ribbon, to import IBM Cloud Object Storage data into a Power View report.
Connect to IBM Cloud Object Storage 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.
Register a New Instance of Cloud Object Storage
If you do not already have Cloud Object Storage in your IBM Cloud account, follow the procedure below to install an instance of SQL Query in your account:
- Log in to your IBM Cloud account.
- Navigate to the page, choose a name for your instance and click Create. You will be redirected to the instance of Cloud Object Storage you just created.
Connecting using OAuth Authentication
There are certain connection properties you need to set before you can connect. You can obtain these as follows:
API Key
To connect with IBM Cloud Object Storage, you need an API Key. You can obtain this as follows:
- Log in to your IBM Cloud account.
- Navigate to the Platform API Keys page.
- On the middle-right corner click "Create an IBM Cloud API Key" to create a new API Key.
- In the pop-up window, specify the API Key name and click "Create". Note the API Key as you can never access it again from the dashboard.
Cloud Object Storage CRN
If you have multiple accounts, you will need to specify the CloudObjectStorageCRN explicitly. To find the appropriate value, you can:
- Query the Services view. This will list your IBM Cloud Object Storage instances along with the CRN for each.
- Locate the CRN directly in IBM Cloud. To do so, navigate to your IBM Cloud Dashboard. In the Resource List, Under Storage, select your Cloud Object Storage resource to get its CRN.
Connecting to Data
You can now set the following to connect to data:
- InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
- ApiKey: Set this to your API key which was noted during setup.
- CloudObjectStorageCRN (Optional): Set this to the cloud object storage CRN you want to work with. While the connector attempts to retrieve this automatically, specifying this explicitly is recommended if you have more than Cloud Object Storage account.
When you connect, the connector completes the OAuth process.
- Extracts the access token and authenticates requests.
- Saves OAuth values in OAuthSettingsLocation to be persisted across connections.
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.
Connect with the Data Connection Wizard
Follow the steps below to connect to the DSN from the Data Connection Wizard in Excel.
- In recent versions of Excel the Data Connection Wizard is not visible by default. To enable the Data Connection Wizard in Excel, go to File -> Options -> Data and under Show legacy data import wizards check the From Data Connection Wizard (Legacy).
- After enabling the Data Connection Wizard, on the Data tab you can click Get Data -> Legacy Wizards -> From Data Connection Wizard (Legacy).
- In the Data Connection Wizard, select the ODBC DSN option.
- Select the ODBC DSN for IBM Cloud Object Storage from the list.
Select the tables you want to work with.
If you want to import multiple tables, deselect the "Connect to a specific table" option. After you connect to the data source, you can select multiple tables: After you click Finish to close the Data Connection Wizard, select the "Enable selection of multiple tables" option in the Select Table dialog.
- In the Import Data dialog, select the destination for your data. For example, select the Table option and the Existing worksheet option. Then click the cell in your worksheet where results should be output.
- Click Insert -> Power View to create a new Power View report.
Create a Table
Tables are the starting point for charts and other representations of your data. To create a table, select a column in the field list. You can also drag and drop table names and column names onto the view.
Create Data Visualizations
On the Design tab, you can change tables into charts and other visualizations.