Use the CData ODBC Driver for RSS in SAS JMP

You can use the CData ODBC Driver for RSS to integrate live data into your statistical analysis with SAS JMP. The driver proxies your queries directly to the RSS API, ensuring that your analysis reflects any changes to the data. The CData ODBC Driver supports the standard SQL used by JMP in the background as you design reports.

This article shows how to access RSS feeds into a report and create data visualization. It also shows how to use SQL to query RSS feeds from the JMP Query Builder.

Access RSS Feeds 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.

You can connect to RSS and Atom feeds, as well as feeds with custom extensions. To connect to a feed, set the URL property. You can also access secure feeds. A variety of authentication mechanisms are supported. See the help documentation for details.

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 RSS Feeds with the Query Builder

After you have created the RSS DSN, you can use SQL to invoke the capabilities of the RSS API. Follow the steps below to execute some supported queries in the Query Builder:

1. In SAS JMP, click File -> Database -> Query Builder. The Select Database Connection dialog is displayed.
2. Click New Connection.
3. On the Machine Data Source tab, select the DSN. In the next step, the Select Tables for Query dialog is displayed.
4. In the Available Tables section, select a table and click Primary.
5. As you drag Available Columns to the Included Columns tab, the underlying SQL query is updated.
6. Click Run Query to display the data.
7. To refresh the results with the current data, right-click Update from Database and click Run Script.

Visualize RSS Feeds

After importing, you can use the Graph Builder to create graphs visually. To open the Graph Builder, click the Graph Builder button in the toolbar.

1. Drag a dimension column onto the x axis. For example, Author.
2. Drag a measure column onto the y axis. For example, Pubdate.
3. Select a chart type. For example, a bar chart.