Design BIRT Reports on ServiceNow Data



Provide current ServiceNow data to your embedded analytics.

The CData JDBC Driver for ServiceNow integrates connectivity to ServiceNow APIs into your data-driven Java applications. You can use the CData JDBC Driver for ServiceNow with the BIRT (Business Intelligence Reporting Tools) platform to create BIRT reports that reflect changes to your data in real time.

About ServiceNow Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live ServiceNow data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Get optimized performance since CData uses the REST API for data and the SOAP API for schema.
  • Read, write, update, and delete ServiceNow objects like Schedules, Timelines, Questions, Syslogs and more.
  • Use SQL stored procedures for actions like adding items to a cart, submitting orders, and downloading attachments.
  • Securely authenticate with ServiceNow, including basic (username and password), OKTA, ADFS, OneLogin, and PingFederate authentication schemes.

Many users access live ServiceNow data from preferred analytics tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Excel, and use CData solutions to integrate ServiceNow data with their database or data warehouse.


Getting Started


  1. If you have not already done so, install the BIRT Framework plugin and the Database Development plugin for Eclipse.
  2. Click File -> New -> Report. The Report Design perspective is opened.
  3. In the Data Explorer, right-click Data Sources and click New Data Source.
  4. Select the Create from a Data Source Type in the Following List option and select JDBC Data Source.
  5. Click Manage Drivers and add the driver JAR, located in the lib subfolder of the installation folder.
  6. In the Database URL box, enter the JDBC URL containing the connection string.

    ServiceNow uses the OAuth 2.0 authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to register an OAuth app with ServiceNow to obtain the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret connection properties. In addition to the OAuth values, you will need to specify the Instance, Username, and Password connection properties.

    See the "Getting Started" chapter in the help documentation for a guide on connecting to ServiceNow.

    Built-in Connection String Designer

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

    java -jar cdata.jdbc.servicenow.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.

    A typical JDBC URL is below:

    jdbc:servicenow:OAuthClientId=MyOAuthClientId;OAuthClientSecret=MyOAuthClientSecret;Username=MyUsername;Password=MyPassword;URL=https://myinstance12345.service-now-com;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH
  7. Right-click the Data Sets folder and select the JDBC data source for ServiceNow.
  8. In the resulting dialog, build the SELECT query to be used to retrieve the data for the report. This article uses the following query: SELECT sys_id, priority FROM incident
  9. In the Palette, drag a Chart onto the editor. The chart wizard is displayed.
  10. After selecting the chart type, drag columns onto the chart fields on the Select Data tab.
  11. Click Run -> View Report -> In Web Viewer to view the report.

Your BIRT reports can now pick up any updates to ServiceNow data.

To publish the report to your application server, add the driver JAR to the BIRT Viewer's classpath. For more information, see the CData KB for guides to deploying the JDBC Driver on Java application servers.

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the ServiceNow Driver to get started:

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Rapidly create and deploy powerful Java applications that integrate with ServiceNow data includingSchedules, Timelines, Questions, Syslogs, and more!