Integrate Reckon Accounts Hosted Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

The CData JDBC Driver for Reckon Accounts Hosted data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to Reckon Accounts Hosted data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on Reckon Accounts Hosted 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 Reckon Accounts Hosted connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

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

     The connector makes requests to Reckon Accounts Hosted through OAuth. Specify the following connection properties:

     • SubscriptionKey: Required. You get this value when you created your developer account.
     • CountryVersion: Defaults to 2021.R2.AU.
     • CompanyFile: Required. The path to the company file.
     • User: Required. The username of the company file.
     • Password: Required. The password of the company file.
     • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH to let the driver handle access tokens.
     • CallbackURL: The redirectURI of your Custom OAuth App.
     • OAuthClientId: The client id of your Custom OAuth App.
     • OAuthClientSecret: The client secret of your Custom OAuth App.

     CData provides an embedded OAuth application that simplifies OAuth desktop authentication. See the Help documentation for information on other OAuth authentication methods (web, headless, etc.), creating custom OAuth applications, and reasons for doing so.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Reckon Accounts Hosted JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.reckonaccountshosted.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:reckonaccountshosted:SubscriptionKey=my_subscription_key;CountryVersion=2021.R2.AU;CompanyFile=Q:/CompanyName.QBW;User=my_user;Password=my_password;CallbackURL=http://localhost:33333;OAuthClientId=my_oauth_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=my_oauth_client_secret;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH
   • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.reckonaccountshosted.ReckonAccountsHostedDriver.
   • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with.

Add Reckon Accounts Hosted Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with Reckon Accounts Hosted data.

1. Add the Reckon Accounts Hosted 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 Name, Balance FROM Accounts WHERE IsActive = 'true'
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 Accounts table.
4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.