How to connect Amazon QuickSight to SAP Business Warehouse Data

Amazon QuickSight allows users to build interactive dashboards in the cloud. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get cloud-to-cloud access to SAP Business Warehouse data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to SAP Business Warehouse in Connect AI and build dashboards in Amazon QuickSight with access to SAP Business Warehouse data.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for SAP Business Warehouse, allowing you to allowing build visualizations from SAP Business Warehouse data in Amazon QuickSight. By importing your SAP Business Warehouse data into the Amazon QuickSight "Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine" (SPICE), you can leverage the powerful data processing features of the Amazon ecosystem to build responsive dashboards. And with the ability to schedule refreshes of the data stored in SPICE, you control how up-to-date your dashboards are.

Configure SAP Business Warehouse Connectivity for Amazon QuickSight

Connectivity to SAP Business Warehouse from Amazon QuickSight is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with SAP Business Warehouse data from Amazon QuickSight, we start by creating and configuring a SAP Business Warehouse connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection

2. Select "SAP Business Warehouse" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to SAP Business Warehouse.

   To connect to SAP Business Warehouse, set the URL property to a valid SAP Business Warehouse server base URL. The driver must connect to SAP Business Warehouse instances hosted over HTTP with XMLA access.

   The driver supports the following authentication schemes via the AuthScheme property:

   • None: Anonymous authentication, if available on the server.
   • Basic: Set User and Password and set AuthScheme to Basic.
   • Kerberos: See the Using Kerberos section of the help documentation for the required Kerberos properties.

   By default, the driver attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats.

   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add SAP Business Warehouse Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give the 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 and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to SAP Business Warehouse data from Amazon QuickSight.

Import SAP Business Warehouse Data into SPICE and Create Interactive Dashboards

The steps below outline creating a new data set based on the connection to SAP Business Warehouse in Connect AI, importing the dataset into SPICE, and building a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into Amazon QuickSight and click "Manage data."
2. Click "Now data set," select SQL Server as the data source, configure the connection to your Connect AI instance, and click "Create data source."
3. Select a table to visualize (or subait a custom SQL query for your data).
4. Click "Edit/Preview data" to customize the data set.
5. Select "Import to SPICE for quicker analytics" and click "Visualize."
6. Select fields to visualize and a visual type.

Schedule Refreshes for SPICE Data Sets

QuickSight users can schedule refreshes for data sets that are imported into SPICE, ensuring that data being analyzed is only as old as the most recent refresh.

1. Navigate to the QuickSight home page.
2. Click "Manage data."
3. Select the data set you wish to refresh.
4. Click "Schedule refresh."
5. Click Create, configure the refresh settings (time zone, repeat frequency, and starting datetime), and click Create.

Live Access to SAP Business Warehouse Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to SAP Business Warehouse data from your Amazon QuickSight dashboard. You can create new visualizations, build interactive dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining live access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from cloud applications like Amazon QuickSight, refer to our Connect AI page.