Analyze Jira Service Desk Data in R

Access Jira Service Desk 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 Jira Service Desk and the RJDBC package to work with remote Jira Service Desk 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 Jira Service Desk and visualize Jira Service Desk 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:

Connect to Jira Service Desk as a JDBC Data Source

You will need the following information to connect to Jira Service Desk as a JDBC data source:

• Driver Class: Set this to cdata.jdbc.jiraservicedesk.JiraServiceDeskDriver
• 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 Jira Service Desk:

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

You can establish a connection to any Jira Service Desk Cloud account or Server instance.

Connecting with a Cloud Account

To connect to a Cloud account, you'll first need to retrieve an APIToken. To generate one, log in to your Atlassian account and navigate to API tokens > Create API token. The generated token will be displayed.

Supply the following to connect to data:

• User: Set this to the username of the authenticating user.
• APIToken: Set this to the API token found previously.

Connecting with a Service Account

To authenticate with a service account, you will need to supply the following connection properties:

• User: Set this to the username of the authenticating user.
• Password: Set this to the password of the authenticating user.
• URL: Set this to the URL associated with your JIRA Service Desk endpoint. For example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.

Note: Password has been deprecated for connecting to a Cloud Account and is now used only to connect to a Server Instance.

Accessing Custom Fields

By default, the connector only surfaces system fields. To access the custom fields for Issues, set IncludeCustomFields.

Built-in Connection String Designer

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

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:

Schema Discovery

The driver models Jira Service Desk APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

Execute SQL Queries

You can use the dbGetQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Jira Service Desk API:

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

Plot Jira Service Desk Data

You can now analyze Jira Service Desk 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: