Explore Geographical Relationships in Stack Exchange Data with Power Map

The CData ODBC Driver for Stack Exchange is easy to set up and use with self-service analytics solutions like Power BI: Microsoft Excel provides built-in support for the ODBC standard. This article shows how to load the current Stack Exchange data into Excel and start generating location-based insights on Stack Exchange data in Power Map.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Stack Exchange

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.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Stack Exchange Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\StackExchange.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Stack Exchange (see below).

Stack Exchange API Profile Settings

Register an application on StackApps to obtain an API Key. The Site property specifies which Stack Exchange site to query (e.g., stackoverflow).

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.

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 Stack Exchange Data into Excel

You can import data into Power Map either from an Excel spreadsheet or from Power Pivot. For a step-by-step guide to use either method to import Stack Exchange data, see the "Using the ODBC Driver" section in the help documentation.

Geocode Stack Exchange Data

After importing the Stack Exchange data into an Excel spreadsheet or into PowerPivot, you can drag and drop Stack Exchange entities in Power Map. To open Power Map, click any cell in the spreadsheet and click Insert -> Map.

In the Choose Geography menu, Power Map detects the columns that have geographic information. In the Geography and Map Level menu in the Layer Pane, you can select the columns you want to work with. Power Map then plots the data. A dot represents a record that has this value. When you have selected the geographic columns you want, click Next.

Select Measures and Categories

You can then simply select columns: Measures and categories are automatically detected. The available chart types are Stacked Column, Clustered Column, Bubble, Heat Map, and Region.