Placid Reporting and Star Schemas in OBIEE
The CData ODBC Driver for Placid is a standard database driver that can integrate real-time access to Placid data into your data warehouse or directly into your reporting tool. This article shows how to bypass the data warehouse and import operational Placid 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 Placid Data as a Remote Oracle Database.
Connect to Placid 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.
Placid uses API Key authentication to control access to the API. API tokens are project-specific and can be obtained from your project settings on placid.app.
Using API Key Authentication
To obtain your API key, log in to placid.app, navigate to your project, open the project settings, and generate an API token from the API section. Note that each API token is scoped to a specific project.
After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:
- AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
- APIKey: Set this to your Placid project API token.
Example connection string:
Profile=C:\profiles\Placid.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_project_api_token';
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 Placid Metadata
Follow the steps below to use the OBIEE Client Tools to import Placid metadata into an OBIEE repository. You can then integrate Placid data into your business models.
Open the Administration Tool and click File -> New Repository.
- In the Connection Type menu, select ODBC 3.5 and select the CData DSN.
- Select the metadata types you want to import under the Relational Sources option and then select Placid tables.
