Create Reports from JSON Services in Looker Studio

Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, empowers users to craft customized reports featuring data visualizations that can be shared with clients while reflecting your brand identity. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to JSON services to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for JSON and generating reports from JSON services within Looker Studio.

CData Connect AI offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for JSON, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live JSON services within Looker Studio without the need for data replication. As you create visualizations, Looker Studio generates queries to retrieve data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to JSON. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested JSON services.

Configure JSON Connectivity for Looker Studio

Connectivity to JSON from Looker Studio is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with JSON services from Looker Studio, we start by creating and configuring a JSON connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection

2. Select "JSON" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to JSON.

   See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models JSON APIs as bidirectional database tables and JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

   After setting the URI and providing any authentication values, set DataModel to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

   The DataModel property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

   • Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your JSON data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
   • FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
   • Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

   See the Modeling JSON Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add JSON Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to JSON services from Looker Studio.

Visualize Live JSON Services from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker Studio to create a new JSON data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into Looker Studio, click data sources, create a new data source, and choose CData Connect AI Connector.

2. Click Authorize and allow access to your Google account.
3. Click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance
4. In the CData Connect AI Connector in Looker Studio select Connections to import from the dropdown and click Next

5. Now select a Connection (e.g. JSON1) and click Next
6. Select a Table (e.g. people) or use a Custom Query and click Connect to continue
7. If needed, modify columns, click Create Report, and add the data source to the report.

8. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
9. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.

Live Access to JSON Services from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live JSON services from your Looker Studio workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating JSON services.

Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.