PayPal Reporting and Star Schemas in OBIEE

The CData ODBC Driver for PayPal is a standard database driver that can integrate real-time access to PayPal data into your data warehouse or directly into your reporting tool. This article shows how to bypass the data warehouse and import operational PayPal 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 PayPal Data as a Remote Oracle Database.

Connect to PayPal 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.

The provider surfaces tables from two PayPal APIs. The APIs use different authentication methods.

• The REST API uses the OAuth standard. To authenticate to the REST API, you will need to set the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL properties.
• The Classic API requires Signature API credentials. To authenticate to the Classic API, you will need to obtain an API username, password, and signature.

See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the necessary API credentials.

To select the API you want to work with, you can set the Schema property to REST or SOAP. By default the SOAP schema will be used.

For testing purposes you can set UseSandbox to true and use sandbox credentials.

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 PayPal Metadata

Follow the steps below to use the OBIEE Client Tools to import PayPal metadata into an OBIEE repository. You can then integrate PayPal data into your business models.

1. Open the Administration Tool and click File -> New Repository.

2. In the Connection Type menu, select ODBC 3.5 and select the CData DSN.
3. Select the metadata types you want to import under the Relational Sources option and then select PayPal tables.