Analyze Power BI XMLA Data in Cognos Analytics

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Use CData Connect Cloud to connect to Power BI XMLA from Cognos Analytics and analyze live Power BI XMLA data.

IBM Watson®-powered Cognos Analytics lets you clean and connect your data and build visualizations. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, you get instant, real-time connectivity between your cloud data and Cognos Analytics for data management, visualization, analytics, and more. This article shows how to connect to Power BI XMLA in CData Connect Cloud and then analyze Power BI XMLA data in Cognos Analytics.

NOTE: These instructions require Cognos Analytics 11.2.4 or higher

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Power BI XMLA, allowing you to analyze live Power BI XMLA data in Cognos — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Power BI XMLA, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Power BI XMLA data.

Connect to Power BI XMLA in Connect Cloud

CData Connect Cloud uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources.

  1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
  2. Select "Power BI XMLA" from the Add Connection panel
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Power BI XMLA.

    To connect, set the Url property to a valid PowerBIXMLA workspace. For instance, powerbi://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/myorg/CData.

  4. Click Create & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Power BI XMLA Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
  2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Power BI XMLA data from Cognos Analytics.

Connect to Power BI XMLA in Cognos Analytics

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Cloud from Cognos Analytics to analyze live Power BI XMLA data.

Download the CData Connect Cloud JDBC Driver

  1. Download and install the CData Connect Cloud JDBC Driver: https://www.cdata.com/cloud/clients/download.aspx#jdbc.
  2. Copy the JAR file (cdata.jdbc.connect.jar) from the installation directory (e.g., C:\Program Files\CData\JDBC Driver for CData Connect\lib) to the "drivers" folder in your Cognos Analytics installation directory.

Configure the Connection to CData Connect Cloud

  1. Open IBM Cognos and navigate to Manage > Data server connections.
  2. Click the icon to add a data server.
  3. Select CData Connect Cloud.
  4. Set JDBC URL to the appropriate connection string. For example: jdbc:connect://AuthScheme=Basic;
  5. Set Driver class name to "cdata.jdbc.connect.ConnectDriver"
  6. Create and store authenticate credentials by selecting an authentication method
    • Set Username to your CData Connect Cloud username (e.g., user@mydomain.com)
    • Set Password to the PAT you previously generated.
  7. Click Test connection to confirm that the connection succeeds.

At this point, you are ready to analyze and visualize Power BI XMLA data in Cognos Analytics. For more information about using Cognos Analytics, please refer to the Cognos Analytics documentation.

Live Access to Power BI XMLA Data for Analytics

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Power BI XMLA data from Cognos Analytics. You can create new visualizations, build reports, and more — without replicating Power BI XMLA data.

Try CData Connect Cloud and get real-time data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.