Query, Visualize, and Share live REST Data in Redash

Redash is a collaboration tool that lets you query, visualize, and share your data. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, Redash gets access to live REST data. This article demonstrates how to connect to REST using Connect Cloud and work with live REST data in Redash.

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL Server interface for REST, allowing you to query data from REST 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 REST, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested REST data quickly.

Configure REST Connectivity for Redash

Connectivity to REST from Redash is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with REST data in Redash, 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.

Connect to REST from Redash using Connect Cloud

To establish a connection from Redash to CData Connect Cloud using the SQL Server API, follow these steps.

1. Log into Redash.
2. Click the settings widget on the top right.
3. Click New Data Source.
4. Select Microsoft SQL Server as the Data Source Type.
5. On the configuration tab, set the following properties:
   • Database Name: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect Cloud data source you want to connect to (for example, Salesforce1).
   • Server: enter the virtual SQL Server host name (tds.cdata.com)
   • User: enter your CData Connect Cloud username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect Cloud interface. For example, [email protected].
   • Password: enter the PAT you generated on the Settings page.
   • Port: enter 14333
   
6. Click Create.
7. Click Test Connection to ensure that the connection is configured properly.

You can now work with live REST data in Redash.

Get CData Connect Cloud

To get live data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from Redash, try CData Connect Cloud today!