Use the CData ODBC Driver for XML in SAS JMP

You can use the CData ODBC Driver for XML to integrate live data into your statistical analysis with SAS JMP. The driver proxies your queries directly to the XML 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.

The XML API supports bidirectional access. This article shows how to access XML data into a report and create data visualization. It also shows how to use SQL to query and manipulate XML data from the JMP Query Builder.

Access XML Data 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.

See the Getting Started chapter in the data provider documentation to authenticate to your data source: The data provider models XML APIs as bidirectional database tables and XML 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 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 XML 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 XML 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.

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 XML Data with the Query Builder

After you have created the XML DSN, you can use SQL to invoke the capabilities of the XML 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.

Manipulate XML Data

You can execute data manipulation queries from JSL scripts such as the one below. To execute a script, click New Script in the toolbar. To connect, specify the DSN. You can then use the standard SQL syntax:

Visualize XML Data

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, [ personal.name.first ].
2. Drag a measure column onto the y axis. For example, [ personal.name.last ].
3. Select a chart type. For example, a bar chart.