Analyze REST Data in Cognos Analytics

Cognos Analytics, powered by IBM Watson®, empowers users to cleanse and establish connections with their data while creating visualizations. When integrated with CData Connect Cloud, users gain immediate, real-time connectivity between cloud-based data sources and Cognos Analytics, facilitating data management, visualization, analytics, and more. This article provides step-by-step guidance on connecting to REST via CData Connect Cloud and subsequently analyzing REST data within Cognos Analytics.

NOTE: These instructions require Cognos Analytics 11.2.4 or higher

CData Connect Cloud offers a dedicated cloud-to-cloud interface for REST, enabling users to perform real-time analysis on REST data within Cognos without the need to replicate data to a natively supported database. Equipped with built-in optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect Cloud efficiently directs all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to REST. This harnesses server-side processing to promptly provide the requested REST data.

Configure REST Connectivity for Cognos Analytics

Connectivity to REST from Cognos Analytics is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with REST data from Cognos Analytics, we start by creating and configuring a REST connection.

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

   See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models REST APIs as bidirectional database tables and XML/JSON files as read-only views (local files, files stored on popular cloud services, and FTP servers). The major authentication schemes are supported, including HTTP Basic, Digest, NTLM, OAuth, and FTP. See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation for authentication guides.

   After setting the URI and providing any authentication values, set Format to "XML" or "JSON" and set DataModel to more closely match the data representation to the structure of your data.

   The DataModel property is the controlling property over how your data is represented into tables and toggles the following basic configurations.

   • Document (default): Model a top-level, document view of your REST data. The data provider returns nested elements as aggregates of data.
   • FlattenedDocuments: Implicitly join nested documents and their parents into a single table.
   • Relational: Return individual, related tables from hierarchical data. The tables contain a primary key and a foreign key that links to the parent document.

   See the Modeling REST Data chapter for more information on configuring the relational representation. You will also find the sample data used in the following examples. The data includes entries for people, the cars they own, and various maintenance services performed on those cars.

   
4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add REST 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 REST data from Cognos Analytics.

Connect to REST from Cognos Analytics

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Cloud from Cognos Analytics to analyze live REST 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., [email protected])
   • 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 REST data in Cognos Analytics. For more information about using Cognos Analytics, please refer to the Cognos Analytics documentation.

Live Access to REST Data for Analytics

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

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