Integrate Mixpanel Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

The CData JDBC driver for Mixpanel data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to Mixpanel data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on Mixpanel data in Pentaho.

Connect and Create a Report

1. Copy the JAR file of the driver, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory, to the \Report-Designer\lib\jdbc\ folder in the Pentaho directory.
2. Run the report-designer.bat file in the \Report-Designer\ folder to open the Report-Designer UI.

3. Create a new data source with the driver by clicking Data -> Add Data Source -> Advanced -> JDBC (Custom) and then creating a new Mixpanel connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

   • Custom Connection URL property: Enter the JDBC URL. This starts with jdbc:api: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

     Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Mixpanel Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Mixpanel.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Mixpanel (see below).

     Mixpanel API Profile Settings

     Obtain Mixpanel service account credentials from your organization settings under Service Accounts, then use the service account username and secret to authenticate.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Mixpanel 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.

     

     When you configure the JDBC URL, 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.

     Below is a typical JDBC URL:

     jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Mixpanel.apip;ProfileSettings='User=your_service_account_username;Password=your_service_account_secret';

   • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver.
   • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with.
   

Add Mixpanel Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with Mixpanel data.

1. Add the Mixpanel source to your report: Click Data -> Add Data Source -> JDBC and select the data source.

2. Configure the query. This article uses the one below:

   SELECT AnnotationId, ProjectId FROM Annotations WHERE Date = '2024-01-15'

   
3. Drag a chart onto your report and double-click it to edit the chart. Run the report to display the chart. You can use the results of this query to create a simple chart for the Annotations table.
4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.