Integrate Pinecone Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Publish reports based on Pinecone data in the Pentaho BI tool.

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

      Authentication

      To authenticate to Pinecone, and connect to your own data or to allow other users to connect to their data, you can use API Key authentication.

      Using API Key Authentication

      To authenticate using an API Key, you need to obtain your API Key from your Pinecone console at https://app.pinecone.io/.

      You can then connect by setting the AuthScheme to APIKey and providing your API key:

      • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
      • APIKey: Set this to your API key from Pinecone.

      Example connection strings:

      Standard API Key Configuration:

      Profile=C:\profiles\Pinecone.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;APIVersion=2025-10';
      

      Built-in Connection String Designer

      For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Pinecone 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\Pinecone.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key;APIVersion=2025-10';
    • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver.
    • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
    • Password: The password to authenticate with.

Add Pinecone Data to a Report

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

  1. Add the Pinecone 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 ,  FROM Indexes WHERE Name = 'my-index'
  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 Indexes table.
  4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Pinecone with the API Driver

Connect to Pinecone