iContact Reporting and Star Schemas in OBIEE
The CData ODBC Driver for iContact is a standard database driver that can integrate real-time access to iContact data into your data warehouse or directly into your reporting tool. This article shows how to bypass the data warehouse and import operational iContact 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 iContact Data as a Remote Oracle Database.
Connect to iContact 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.
Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the iContact Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\IContact.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for iContact (see below).
iContact API Profile Settings
In your iContact account, navigate to Settings & Billing > Integrations and create a Custom API Integration. Your AppId, Username, Password, and AccountId are all available on the Getting Connected page of that integration.
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 iContact Metadata
Follow the steps below to use the OBIEE Client Tools to import iContact metadata into an OBIEE repository. You can then integrate iContact 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 iContact tables.
